
I derided that the room liiid lieen iis«'d its a bar 



THE WAR-WHIRL 
IN WASHINGTON 



BY 



FRANK WARD O'M ALLEY 

OF THE NEW YORK SUN 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY TONY SARG 




NEW YORK 
THE CENTURY CO. 

1918 



Copyright, 1918, by 
The Century Co. 



Published, May, 1918 



M -8 1918 



-n, 1 . n ^ 



TO 

THE LADY WHO DOUBTLESS HAS BEEN 
SOMEWHAT MISQUOTED HEREIN, 

MY WIFE 



FOREWORD 

" He does n't want gloom, he does want effi- 
ciency," — that is the way one who is daily in 
closest touch with our war President described 
Mr. Wilson's attitude toward trying days like 
these. He golfs, he goes to the theatre, he 
motors. State dinners and similar social func- 
tions temporarily have been discontinued at the 
capital, largely for economic reasons; in bring- 
ing the social gayeties to an end the frame of 
Administrative thought was far from that kind 
of early Puritan gloom which forbid bear bait- 
ing, " not because the sport gave pain to the 
bear but because it gave pleasure to the spec- 
tators." 

The hardest of hard workers in the legions of 
war toilers in Washington would be the last to 
advise against moments of relaxation just now. 
And if the lighter sides of life in the capital are 
accented in the chapters that follow, the merrier 
phases are not gone into because of a lack of 
appreciation of the solemnities of the blackest 



FOREWORD 

of world tragedies, but solely with the hope that 
at least a semblance of a smile will be brought 
to the faces of a people who have so little time to 
seek out the sources of smiles just now, even in 
their moments of recreation. 

The greater part of these pages was written 
about the time of the big Teutonic (and there- 
fore fruitless), Spring drive of 1918, a military 
offensive which w^as coincident with the real 
beginning of a glorious speeding up of our own 
war policies. Indeed the garrulous lady quoted 
so frequently herein insists to-day that until 
w^ell into the present year she continued to hold 
a mirror to the pale lips of our military pro- 
gramme w^ithout noting the faintest mist of 
moisture on the glass. But although she re- 
mains firm in her belief, even at this late day, 
that what she says in the following chapters 
"still goes,'' it is worthy of note that as our 
war-whirling Washington day by day whirls 
faster and faster, just so steadily she approaches 
a state of cheerfulness that is ecstatic. 

— F. W. O'M. 
New York City, 
May, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PA(5E 

I Knock!— And It Shall be Opened, 

Maybe 3 

II Rooms, Rum and Ructions .... 34 

III Water, Water Everywhere, but not 

A Single Drink 63 

IV "All's Riotous Along THE Potomac!" 96 
V The Town With the Trolley Off . 117 

VI The Eagle Chirps 128 

VII Sherman was Right 167 

VIII All Bound Round with a Red Wool 

String 199 

IX The War and the White House . . 230 

X The Mutual Admiration Club . . 265 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

I decided that the room had been used as a bar Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

And I was off toward the little flowershop before the 

wife had scarcely begun her faint protests ... 16 

I took him behind a pillar and gave him a tip ... 33 

Laughed heartily when asked for a room and bath . 37 

Thence behind a furnace . . . , and so, ever onward . . 44 
And the coal magnate climbed into the only vacant 

barber-chair 49 

So I firmly resolved, before I lost consciousness . . 64 

From every waistcoat pocket were countless fountain pens 88 
"Sir, I kinnot get you that numbah, being as the line is 

busy" 113 

These are the happy days for the City of Gossip . . 128 
The whole house had nothing on me for oratorical fire- 
works 161 

"Oh, in one of our Indian wars out West," finally he ad- 
mitted 176 

And then there is the other kind of "inventor" . . . 225 
"Second door to your left," directed the young man with 

a thumb jerk 240 

The extreme emptiness of that little black bag . . . 273 
And the extravagance of her language left me crumpled 

in my chair 288 



THE WAR-WHIRL 
IN WASHINGTON 



J 



THE WAR-WHIRL 
IN WASHINGTON 

CHAPTER I 
knock! — AND IT SHALL BE OPENED, MAYBE 

RIBS torn free from the Granite State and 
chiseled into fairy-like, but everlasting, 
lace : clay-beds molded and baked to softest tones 
of saffron and magenta, and piled high, brick on 
brick, that sleepy old homes may nestle under 
the tree-arches of sunflecked streets, oldish man- 
sions in a newish land, their walls seamed and 
softened to a gentle loveliness as beautiful as 
your old granny's wrinkled face; and effigies of 
the brave, astride bronze chargers that rear from 
pedestals of granite as solid as the hills and the 
hearts of the wonder city itself; boulevards 
stretching fanwise from the glorious dome, like 
finger-tips that would reach over the hills and 

3 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

far away to caress even the littlest of humble 
hamlets — east and north, south and west, tow- 
ers and domes, fringes of columned marbles, 
leafy slopes, and spires and minarets ; and twin- 
ing and wreathing, wreathing and twining it all 
about, the ribbon river of silver slipping ever be- 
tween the Virginia and the Maryland hills, si- 
lently slipping down to the Southland sea. 

In fact, some burg is Washington, some burg. 
I ^m in the wool-sponging business in lower 
Broadway, New York, and I don't know much 
about writing or art except that I know what I 
like; and so I can't put all I think about Wash- 
ington into words. I and the wife just attend 
strictly to our own business, I to the wool-spong- 
ing part and she to affairs around the flat. 
When it comes, therefore, to putting all I think 
about Washington into even a long paragraph, 
the best I can turn out is to group a lot of the 
fanciest things in the town, and then separate 
the items with periods, which is one trick I 
learned by reading only the best modern maga- 
zine stuff and books. 

In fact, it takes a poet to sum up all that 
Washington is, or all that the lovely old city 
ever will be, and then sing the very soul of the 

4 



KNOCK! — AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

country's capital in three short lines of simple 
native patois: 

Firs' 'n war! 

Firs' 'n peace! 

'N' las' 'n the Amuriean League! 

" And we 're going down and take the old burg 
in before the year is out, all the way from the 
kaiser's statue of Friederick der Gross at the 
War College up to, and including Joe Daniels." 
Thus I to the wife across the breakfast scrapple 
one chill morning in the autumn. " I want to 
see Washington at war. Next spring — what? 
— me for Washington, then, when the tulips are 
out. That 's the time to take it in : all the Vir- 
ginia hills a misty green, and the crocuses blaz- 
ing in the circles all over town, and the generals 
and admirals and everything wearing their white 
uniforms, and the whole shebang all lit up with 
sunlight — just like that time of the year Henry 
Van Dyke wrote about in the piece he got printed 
where he says, ' And fountains leap in Madison 
Square,' or something like that. That would be 
a bad little trip, what? Answer yes or no." 

" No," answered the wife. She held up a hand 
for silence. " In the first place," she began, 

5 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

^' Washington is a southern city. Now, what 's 
the sense in staying up here in the cold and 
snow, so long as we 're going to make the trip at 
all, when we could be going south to Washing- 
ton during our cold months? I want to see 
Washington at war, too, but I want to see it in 
the balmy winter-time." 

" Oh, balmy my eye ! Why, I Ve seen blizzards 
busting along Pennsylvania Avenue in the win- 
ter months that — " 

But there was no use shooting an unanswer- 
able argument toward an empty breakfast-room 
chair. I quit. Again the next morning, and 
the next and next, next, next, we discussed the 
time of going. Autumn merged into an early 
winter of peculiar cussedness, and the wife was 
still wrapped up in that state of just plain stub- 
bornness which causes every reasonable man to 
marvel more and more at the unreasonable, so- 
called mind workings of woman the longer man 
studies her " mental " processes. December was 
waning, and still the wife was stubborn, and I 
had very good reasons, which I explained to her 
almost daily in detail, for not giving in to her 
tantrums. 

" In the springtime, that 's when we 're going 
6 



KNOCK! — AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

to Washington/' I was telling her for the thou- 
sandth time when we sat down, one day during 
the Christmas holidays, for the regular breakfast 
argument. " We *re going when all the Vir- 
ginia hills are a misty green, and everything is 
like what Doc Van Dyke wrote about the foun- 
tains leaping in Madison Square, and — " 

" Oh, shut up, you and your Doc Van Dyke 
leaping in Madison Square," broke in the wife, 
taking her coffee into her dressing-room, her 
stubbornness having at last goaded her to using 
extreme language. "We're going to Washing- 
ton in — " 

" The springtime ! " T shouted before she could 
slam her door. I had thought the matter out 
calmly and reasonably. I knew where T stood 
on the subject, and my mind was made up to 
stand there. 

It was a bright, sunny day in the first week 
in January when the last of our luggage had 
been piled on top of the waiting taxicab, and we, 
the wife and I, at last were headed toward the 
New York end of a Washington-bound train. 
Our intention was to take a train leaving late in 
the forenoon, but we were delayed in getting 

7 



THE WAR WHIKL IN WASHINGTON 

away from the flat l>ecause the record zero 
weather, which in that particular week was grip- 
ping the Atlantic seaboard from the Carolinas 
to Canada, had frozen the radiator or something 
of the taxicab in front of our flat. Conse- 
quently we missed our train. It was just as 
well, perhaps, inasmuch as the railroad company 
had taken that particular Washington train off, 
so we learned later, in order to help win the war. 
Besides, the taxicab's differential, if that 's what 
one calls it, also had got frost-bitten during an 
extra last minute argument, which arose in our 
elevator on our way down to the taxicab. 

There would n't have been any argument if it 
were not that I had remembered suddenly in the 
elevator that Washington had gone dry on the 
previous November 1. This thought came to me 
as we were shooting downw^ard past the fourth 
floor; whereupon I suggested to the wife on the 
instant that I hurry back to the buffet in our 
dining-room with my little old black-leather 
traveling-bag, open the top of the bag and the 
bottom of the butfet, stock up quickly, and hurry 
right down again and join the wife in the taxi- 
cab. The whole process would have taken about 
three, maybe four, minutes. It took the wife at 

8 



KNOCK! — AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

least a minute in the elevator, five minutes in 
the apartment-house lobby, and at least three 
minutes more outside in three degrees below 
zero to ding-dong it into me that if I ran up to 
our dining-room buffet again for one minute, 
we 'd miss the train. And from the general 
trend of the peroration which she delivered out 
at the curb, the blue-nose bandit shivering at 
the tiller of the taxicab doubtless got the notion 
that my chief nourishment, .day and night, was 
hard liquor, whereas my sole reason for going 
back to the buffet was the sudden realization 
that, with every bar and cafe in Washington 
closed by the Government and the keys thrown 
away, there w^ould be no place to turn to in case 
the wife got a chill. Leave it to a woman to 
twist a plea for reasonable medicinal precau- 
tions into the ravings of a dipsomaniac just to 
win her battle. As a matter of record, it is only 
fair to myself to say here that I can take a drink 
or leave it alone whenever I want to, my choice 
being merely to drink moderately each day. 

" Oh, all right," I snapped finally, letting her 
have her own way for once, and dismissing the 
matter of necessary stimulants for good and all. 
" I '11 have time at the station, anyway, to dash 

9 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

into the cafe there and grab off a flask, just sup- 
posing you get a chill or anything while we 're 
away." 

Believe it or not, once the taxicab buccaneer 
had thawed out his machinery sufficiently to get 
going, the wife started right in, and kept it up 
till we were at the ticket-window, on a line of 
argument which had to do with the duty of every 
citizen, especially in time of war, to obey the 
law not only in spirit, but to the letter. Femi- 
nine mentality could not be made to grasp that 
one small quart, say, could be carried to Wash- 
ington, and then, if we found out after we had 
reached the capital that the law said we must 
not even bring the hard stuff into town, I could 
give the whole quart to the medical department 
of some deserving hospital or home for the aged 
or orphan asylum or something, in the District 
of Columbia. No, ^' the law is the law I • ' she 
cried. ^' The law is the law I The law is the 
law I" What kind of argument is that? By 
way of relief I leaned wearily against the noise 
of the clicking taximeter, and watched the dial 
numbers jump upward with every jolt. 

We missed the train, as I 've said, and we 
should n't have been in time for it, an;\'T\'ay, had 

10 



KyOCK: — AXD IT SHALL BE OPENED 

we amved on time, inasmnch as it Lad been 
taken off the .s«'-hednle two day- ' -:' : - Tl.- : ^ -a 
in taking our train and a lot of oii^d.- -ii. >:■ :: 
was explained to us, was the patriotic one thar 
if a lot of X-'Sissenger-trains. which never make 
much money, anyway, were discontimi- :, :"_e 
company could haul just <o much more Mi' iiigan 
furniture to Brooklyn homes, and Persian rugs 
from the Xoith Philadelphia factories out to 
the Middle-Western trade, in other words, could 
expedite these and similar necessities and so 
win the war in Europe. The change in train- 
schedules, however, was not unwelcome : the de- 
lay round the station was reason enough for 
me to suggest that we go up near the cafe end of 
the station and have some luncheon in the res- 
taurant. 

^' Xo I The law is the law ! The law is the 
law I " It was the wife off on her old singsong 
again. '' The Government has seen fit to rule 
that Washington remain dry. and the law is the 
law!- 

My idea of entering the station cafe to get a 
flask of stimulant, which we might find so nec- 
essary in case of illness ( which, in an extremity, 
might even save otir very lives), really was a 

11 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

minor reason for my suggestion that we stroll 
toward the crowded, or cafe, end of the restau- 
rant. As I said before, and the wife knows it 
well; I can take a drink or leave it alone when- 
ever I want to. I do object to being placed in a 
position where, supposing I want to leave it 
alone, I could n't do so of my own volition. 

But five minutes before our early afternoon 
train finally did get away I had a thought. I 
suggested to the wife that I run up to the little 
flower-shop right next to the concourse caf6 and 
get her some violets. It 's a theory of mine that 
little attentions such as flowers and the like 
should not end with courtship, if the wonder of 
early love-days is to persist through wedded life. 
And I was off toward the little flower-shop be- 
fore the wife had scarcely begun her faint pro- 
tests, opening my little old traveling-bag as I 
raced toward the flower-shop next to the caf<§. 
Then, while the florist put the violet tinfoil and 
other doodads around the posy corsage, I at- 
tended to some last purchases in the immediate 
neighborhood, and charged back toward the 
train-gate, resnapping the little old black travel- 
ing-bag on the way. A redcap from Senegambia, 
who had been nursing our luggage up to the time 

12 



KNOCK! — AXD IT SHALL BE OPENED 

that I had cut the traveling bag out of the rest 
of our roundup of baggage when starting toward 
the flower-shop next to the cafe, again tried to 
relieve me of my little old black traveling-bag as 
I rejoined the wife. Amid the crush of other 
patriots who were wedging their way toward the 
train, all headed toward the capital to help save 
the nation, too — amid the jam I drew the red- 
cap far enough to one side to whisper to him as 
gently as possible that if he ever tried to get 
that little old black traveling-bag out of my 
hands again, even for a second, he would spend 
the next three days clasping a lily in a darkened 
room while being survived by a widow. 

The train which the wife and I and the black 
bag finally boarded was known as some kind of 
" Express,"' the Congressional Zipper or the 
Capital Catapult Express or some such federal 
name. Once it had consisted almost entirely of 
parlor-cars, but that was back in the days be- 
fore all Serbia and Belgium had got together 
like a couple of big bullies and had pitched into 
the kaiser until he was goaded into taking up 
arms to defend a wife and seven children. Even 
after America had succeeded in nagging Ger- 
many to the point where the fatherland had to 

13 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

protect itself against our brutal and ruthless 
reaching out for a port on the North Sea, there 
were still many parlor-cars on our particular 
train. But with the progress of the war, along 
came freight and passenger congestion and other 
organic troubles in the railroad's system, espe- 
cially in the freight-yard terminals around New 
York. Wherefore the railroads took almost all 
the parlor-cars off the trains and stored them 
along whatever little strips of unoccupied track- 
age still remained in the terminal yards, thus re- 
lieving the yard congestion and helping to win 
the war. It is said that one or two mighty rail- 
road men picked that whole plan right out of 
their own heads. 

I did n't complain about the lack of parlor- 
cars, because I try to be reasonable and patri- 
otic and everything, and I spend most of my time 
riding in the smoker day-coaches, anyway, even 
when I have seat reservations. But once the 
wife had compelled the parlor-car ticket person 
to say for the eighth time that the few chairs 
on the train had been sold out since some weeks 
back in 1917, — here it was 1918 when he was 
telling us this — the wife began an agonized 



KNOCK! — AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

holler that must have lent a lot of aid and com- 
fort to the enemy. 

" What proportion of the passengers going to 
Washington on this train prefer parlor-car chairs 
to day-coach seats? " asked the wife, fixing the 
parlor-car man with the same eye she levels at 
^our Amsterdam Avenue butcher while he's 
weighing the Sunday roast. 

" Almost all, Madam," replied the ticket per- 
son, and some one not too far back in the wait- 
ing line to be beyond earshot asked the world 
in general if women were n't the limit. 

" And how much more track-room does a par- 
lor-car take up than a day-coach? " the wife de- 
manded. 

" None, Madam." 

" Then why in time don't you run all par — " 

Eudely I had to drag her away, protesting. 
And we got a day-coach seat almost large enough 
for her and our hand luggage before it was too 
late to grab another seat in the smoking-car big 
enough for me and my little old black bag. 

This express train was an express because, so 
we learned from the schedule, once it had pulled 
out of New York around two o'clock in the after- 

15 



THE WAR- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

noon, it made no stops between New York and 
Philadelphia except at Newark. We had been 
told on high authority that the reason so many 
trains had been taken off the line was the war- 
time necessity of keeping the road wide open be- 
tween New York and Washington, that stretch 
being the most important bit of railroad track- 
age, at this particular time, in the world. And 
so, with this in mind, the railroad men, by work- 
ing snappily all around the terminal, got our 
train under way on the wide-open track in less 
than half an hour after it was scheduled to leave. 
By 3 :22 o'clock I was relieved to see, upon look- 
ing up from my paper, that we were well on our 
way to the capital. I remember the exact time, 
because just outside the smoker-window w^as a 
station with a big clock, and a station sign read- 
ing " Elizabeth ■ ' ; and standing on the platform 
was one of our own trainmen crying in tones of 
finality, "Ex-press turain to Phildelfyahbaltee- 
morenworshunton ! This turain does not stop 
butween Nooark and Norrrrrthphildelfyah! 
'Board! '^ I remembered vaguely having heard 
the same person say the same thing about half an 
hour earlier at Nooark, the trainman having had 
no way of knowing then, of course, that the en- 

16 




And I was off toward the little flowershop before the wife had 
scarcely begun her faint protests 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

gineer, owing to the war, was going to change 
his mind and stop at Elizabeth. 

Somebody many years earlier had forgotten to 
make the train-shed at Philadelphia long enough 
to hold a train of day-coaches of the length of our 
particular string of cars. We had just passed 
Trenton, where the express also was brought 
to a stop long enough to take aboard two w^omen 
and a crate containing a Chow dog, when news 
that the train was too big for the Philadelphia 
train-shed began to permeate through our cars. 
The conductor plainly was vexed. Finally he 
stopped the train on the far side of the Delaware 
Elver and called the engineer out of his cab so 
they could talk the matter over along the road- 
side. The afternoon was waning, and we were 
fretting to get on; so I suggested from the plat- 
form that the train, provided it kept to the pace 
it had set for itself since 2 o'clock, could tempo- 
rarily be run by the fireman, thus permitting the 
engineer and conductor to walk along beside it 
while settling the knotty Philadelphia problem. 
The best I got from the engineer for my sugges- 
tion was a request to mind my own darn busi- 
ness. 

"So you're running the railroads, too?" the 
17 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

conductor asked me, I thought a bit sarcastically. 
" Well, go to it, old top," he added ; " we might 
as well make it unanimous." 

I left them to wrestle with the problem with- 
out my help. They could n't master it unaided ; 
w^herefore they were compelled to decide finally 
to run right by Philadelphia with a hearty laugh, 
pausing only long enough out in West Philadel- 
phia to dump off whatever passengers for the cen- 
ter of the city might be aboard. Here was an 
idea not altogether displeasing to the Philadel- 
phia passengers : they philosophically agreed that 
by being permitted to quit the train out in West 
Philadelphia those among them who had been 
standing in the aisles since leaving New York, 
which included most of them, could vary the 
monotonous journey at least to the extent of get- 
ting a seat in a trolley-car all the way from the 
West Philadelphia station to Broad street. 
Thereafter they waited eagerly for their journey's 
end, little realizing that while the engineer was 
walking back along the train to hold his roadside 
conference with the conductor he had noticed the 
great throngs of khaki-clad lads in the coaches. 
The sight of all the soldiers doubtless had con- 
vinced him that he was drawing a troop-train ; 

18 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

and as it is one of the newest articles of war — 
as every soldier in the new army has learned dur- 
ing recent months — that all troop-trains must be 
drawn just fast enough forward to keep the cars 
from backing up, the afternoon had almost 
perished before we came in sight of the first row 
of two-ply brick houses in Philadelphia's farthest 
Northeast. 

Dusk had begun to fall by the time we had ex- 
changed, at the West Philadelphia station, our 
original load of Philadelphians for a new and 
somewhat larger crop of Philadelphia folk head- 
ing from their own home town for Baltimore or 
Washington, — mostly for Washington. By this 
time I had become thoroughly smoked inside and 
out, and I remembered the wife, who is rarely 
far from my thoughts. Fearing that she was as 
hungry as I was, I looked her up in her day- 
coach, and suggested that we get a table in the 
dining-car and hang on to it all the way into 
Washington. 

She was keen for the idea, especially when it 
came to her mind that we should cross the Mason 
and Dixon Line a few miles farther on, and would 
then, so she put it, " be in the sunny South, where 
they fry chicken so deliciously." The dining-car 

19 



THE WAK- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

conductor agreed with the wife that we 'd still 
be in the North until we had passed some place 
named Iron Hill, wherever that is. Meanwhile, 
by wedging a way into the aisle of the diner and 
standing unostentatiously, but steadily, close to 
the chair of the most nervous-looking man, and 
his equally nervous wife, in the whole dining-car, 
that particular couple could n't help but hurry 
through their meal. In a run of less than ten 
miles flat we had secured their table and a menu. 
Sure enough, chicken fried in *' Southern 
style" was listed on the dinner-card; but from 
the waiter w^e learned that the dining-car manage- 
ment had sold the last of it up near Trenton to 
a drummer in the shoe line from Brocton, Massa- 
chusetts. Also the car was " all sold out " in the 
matter of roast beef and candied sweet potatoes 
and corn fritters and corn muffins and steaks and 
chops. The waiter assured us, on the other hand, 
that the cold tongue was beautiful, also that there 
was a sufficient quantity of potato salad left to 
make a mess. The management, it seems, had 
prepared so lavishly for luncheon that no time 
had been left to think about dinner arrangements. 
Also the unfortunate dining-car conductor had 
had no way of finding out in advance that the 

20 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

train was to be just as jammed with hungry pas- 
sengers on that day as it had been on preceding 
days for several weeks, or that the train was go- 
ing to be as far behind time on that day as it 
had been for days and weeks innumerable. 

Nothing was left for us to do but to kill time — 
and so hold our dining-car seats — by dawdling 
over the cold tongue, potato salad, and a copy 
of Baedeker that the wife had brought along to 
bone up on the way down. The list of restau- 
rants on the first page of the Washington section 
of the Baedeker was most appetizing. 

" There 's a whole string of them, with the ad- 
dresses and everything! " the wife cried happily, 
and she read aloud. " Listen : —' Willard, 
Shoreham, Raleigh and other hotels on European 
plan ; Capitol restaurants ; also Rathskeller, cor- 
ner Eighth and E Streets ; Munich beer at Fritz 
Renter's Rathslceller, Pennsylvania Avenue and 
Second Street, much frequented by Germans; 
Herman Steig — ' " 

I interrupted to ask what year that particular 
edition of Baedeker had been shot off the press. 

" In 1909. But no matter, here are a lot of 
others. And listen ! It says here : ' CABS — 
(Hacks and Hansoms). For 15 squares each 

21 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

pers. 25c., each addit. [The wife is nothing if not 
literal, always] 5 squares 10c. , at night (12.30-5 
A.M.) 40 and 15c.; per hour, 12 pers.' — no, I 
guess Mr. Baedeker means one or two persons — 
^ per hour, 1 hyphen 2 pers., 75c.' Only 75 cents 
fer two persons for a whole hour in a taxicab 
Fancy that ! " 

I could merely mumble in reply that there were 
limits to my fancying powers. Even when I 'm 
fully awake I 'm not over-imaginative, and now it 
was getting past my usual bedtime; wherefore 
the old bean was n't working even as freely as 
usual along the imagination belt. I took no in- 
terest, but dozed oft*, even when our train began 
to make a leisurely sort of sight-seeing trip 
through Baltimore, stopping for a few minutes 
at a time whenever we came abreast of any of the 
more interesting industrial plants along the rail- 
way tracks. 

With a start I was awakened by a sound like 
nothing so much as the persistent patter of rain. 
Yet the night was cloudless, cold, and clear. Our 
train was reposing peacefully on a siding to per- 
mit the last section of the Night Liquor Local, 
eastbound from Washington to Baltimore, to 
pant impatiently by. Some one opened a ven- 

22 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

tilator in the car, and as the dry roar of the 
Baltimore -bound Liquor Local died away in the 
night, the odd pattering noise of the " rain '' grew 
louder. Onward then our express jolted, and 
with each foot of progress the " rain " patter 
began to be threaded with a continuous tinkle of 
tiny bells. We listened, puzzled, until the soft 
patter had become a drum-fire of one long click- 
ing sound, now sharply punctuated with the dis- 
tinct tinkle of the tiny bells. 

" I have it ! It 's type-writers. We 're in 
Washington, Girlie, and the night shift is win- 
ning the war I " 

I had it. From a milky way of lighted office 
windows came the "^ click-click-click bing I-click- 
ety-ick-ick-ick - bing - slam - clinnnnng - etyclick- 
ick- ick- ick- bing- clunnnnng- zowie !- bang." We 
thrilled. We were there I Close enough, anyway, 
actually to hear this intellectual evidence of the 
war at its worst. We thought it worth while, as 
we inched our way near and nearer the outside 
ends of the station platform, to kill time with 
some simple arithmetic, if for no other reason 
than to keep our record absolutely accurate. In 
a measured space of time we counted 1,723,621,- 
801,752,116 distinct clicks, thereby learning by a 

23 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

bit of simple multiplication that in an average 
hour even the night shift in Washington slams 
the typewriter-keys 11,825,191,638,727,211,912,- 
390,736,777,652,442,392,151 times to win the war. 
The wife insists that I 've got the hourly type- 
writing clicks all balled up in my Washington 
notes with the war loan figures, and maybe she 's 
right; but I feel sure that the 11,825,191,638,727,- 
211,912,390,736,777,652,442,392,151 is the total of 
clicks. 

As in Philadelphia our train was too long to 
get all the way into Washington. Then when we 
had walked along the tracks for several city 
squares to the outside end of the platforms we 
learned that the passengers who had seats in the 
forward cars had corralled all the redcaps in 
sight. Through the black railroad yard, happily, 
came a man with a lantern, who explained to us 
that the whole trouble was that Washington was 
overcrowded. We thanked him. 

" According to the cops," our kind informant 
went on, " this town has jumped from 350,000 to 
400,000. And as if that ain't bad enough, the 
extra crowd includes Arthur Brisbane and Billy 
Sunday, and they say Colonel Roosevelt is threat- 
ening to come, too. It's something fierce I '' 

24 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

" My good man," said the wife, after we had 
thanked him for the additional information, " I 
apologize for asking one of you proud Southern- 
ers to descend to manual labor, but could n't you 
help us get our luggage from this spot closer into 
town?" 

The wife was right ; he was one of those proud 
Southerners. Under cover of darkness I slipped 
the catch loose on the little old black traveling- 
bag and whispered to him, beyond earshot of the 
wife, whether he had such a thing about him as a 
corkscrew. He did n't have anything except a 
corkscrew. Stifling his pride for the nonce, the 
Southern gentleman not only grabbed up all the 
wife's bags and boxes; he even tried to pry my 
little old black traveling-bag away from my firm 
grasp also. 

Then somewhere on the fringe of the concourse 
crowd we came upon a stray redcap. He was all 
sewed up, he said, with engagements that w^ould 
keep him busy for half an hour. Standing just 
beneath the redcap's visor I breathed ever so 
gently, just once, and the redcap paused rigidly 
in his flight, one foot suspended in mid-air,, and 
his eyes glued to the little black bag. He was 
pointing like a bird dog. There was another 

25 



THE WAK WHIRL IN WASITTNOTON 

privaio coiit'oiviioo on the side linos, tiiirini:: which 
I loarnod iliat the roiUap iioi only ownod a covk- 
soivw, bur also one of those little t'oldiiiii" eiips of 
aluminum and a bad ehill. As I took him behind 
a pillar and gave him a tip that half tilled the 
foldini:-en}\ — he had absolutely dismissed all his 
previous ong-aiiomonts by now, — the fact Hashed 
upon me that riiilit there in my own little blaek 
bag I had a key to the city that would enable me 
to go any place, enter everywhere, get anything I 
A moment later the key failed to work when 
we tried to get through the station crowd to meet 
the open air. It seems that every train arriving 
from any place, so the redcap explained, contains 
at least one new member, often many, for each of 
the war-work committees now in the making in 
Washington. Envoys from all of the war-work 
committees also are in waiting at the Union Sta- 
tion always to welcome the incoming committee- 
r.ien : wherefore avo had to try to jimmy a passage 
through envoys and old-time members of com- 
mittees welcoming new-comers to the Interde- 
partmental Advisory Committee of the Council 
of National Defense, the Executive Committee of 
the Committee Under the Advisory Committee, 
the (^mnmittee on Raw ^laterials. Minerals, and 

26 



KyOCK!— AXD IT SHALL BE OPENED 

Metals, the National Committee of Patriotic So- 
cieties' Committee to Prevent the Spread of Per- 
nicious Rumors, the Committee on Wire Com- 
munication of the Committee of Tele^aphs and 
Telephones, the Committee on Inland Water 
Transportation of the Council of National De- 
fense, the Committee of Medical Ser-vice of For- 
eign Commissions, the Committee of the Aircraft 
Production Board, the Automotive Transport 
Committee, the Cooperative Committees of the 
Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the 
Committee of the Industrial Inventory Section, 
the Friends of Irish Freedom Committee for Irish 
Representation at the Peace Council of the Allied 
Nations, the Committee on Storage Facilities, 
the Executive Committee of the National Re- 
search Council, the Committee of the General 
Medical Section Board and Medical Section of 
the National Council, the American Committee 
for Polish Indexjendence, the Committee of the 
National Council Section in Cooperation with 
the States, the Committee on Trans^jor-tation and 
Communication, the Advisory Committee for 
Aeronautics, the Alabama-Mississippi Emergency 
Bureau, the Georgia-Florida Yellow Pine Emer- 
gency Bureau, the Copper Producer-s Committee, 

27 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the Executive Committee of the National Civil 
Liberties Bureau, the Committee of the Ship- 
building Labor Adjustment Board, the Commit- 
tee of the Popular Government League, the Rail- 
road Executives Advisory Committees, the Com- 
mittee of the Southern Hardwood Emergency 
Bureau, the National Committee of the Emer- 
gency Peace Federation, the Committee on Gas 
and Electric Service, the Committee of the Wash- 
ington Business Service Bureau, the Committee 
of the National Society for the Prevention of the 
Importation of German-bred Police-dogs into the 
United States, — and a few more. We were fortu- 
nate in arriving on a comparatively quiet night. 
Some evenings the concourse is crowded. 

They took every motor-car in sight. Nothing 
was left to the wife and me except to stand on the 
fringe of the committees, varying the monotony 
as best we could by gazing in awe southward 
toward the misty dome of the Capitol. There it 
towered, white yet vague, above the vista of Dela- 
ware Avenue, the ghost of a great, bounding bal- 
loon wraith, tugging at its fastenings as the thou- 
sands of cubic feet of hot air therein urged it, the 
father and mother of all gasbags, ever to fly to 
the heavens. 

28 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

We never did get a taxicab. In Washington 
now there are n't any taxicabs. Close on the 
heels of the first onrush of war patriots upon the 
capital to save the nation had come taxicab 
chauffeurs from Baltimore, Richmond, Phila- 
delphia, Wilmington, Pittsburgh, everywhere, 
their battered tin taxi-flivvers careening madly 
through clouds of autumnal dust as they, too, 
converged upon Washington to help win the war. 
As each taxi-skipper crossed into the District he 
first inquired his way toward the banks of the 
Potomac, — known locally as the p'Tomk, — and 
wrenched the taximeter off his car and flung it far 
out into the stream. Then, with the first cold 
weather, ice-floes, which in former years had 
floated onward calmly to the sea, began to hesi- 
tate. By the time the wife and I reached the 
capital the oldest inhabitants were standing on 
the banks of the p'Tomk at gaze, mystified, the 
river clogged with ice-chunks as never before. 
It was not until late in the winter that the city 
authorities finally discovered that the ice-cakes 
could not move because the entire channel was 
filled up with taximeters from Pittsburgh and all 
points east. 

We corralled and roped some sort of car at last, 
29 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN AYASHINGTON 

scarred a bit where the taximeter had been hast- 
ily jimmied off aud thrown away ; decorated, like 
all the other one-time taxicabs with a legend, 
" Auto To Hire '• ; manned by a direct descendant 
of Captain Kidd; and finished off aft with a flap- 
ping piece of the torn lining of the car top, a sort 
of black flag doubtless, being permitted by the 
skipper of the cab to flutter there in lieu of a 
Jolly Roger. The wife had secured, by executing 
a particularly prompt jump, the fifth seat inside 
the four-seated taxicabin, and simultaneously I 
had eased myself beside young Kidd outside on 
the hurricane-deck. " To the Pelham," cried a 
perfect stranger who was seated with the wife 
inside. " To the Williams," I said simply, I in 
my ignorance starting in away down the alphabet 
at the W's, when, had I only known then, it would 
have been perhaps as well and certainly no worse 
had I started in first at the hotels beginning with 
A, and systematically run through the list all the 
way to the Zenoble Arms, which is in farthest 
Georgetown. 

" Boss," whispered the chauffeur, blushing as 
deeply as it is possible for a chauffeur to blush 
and trying the while to hide his shame by pre- 
tending to search for a flivver pedal concealed at 

30 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

the base of the luggage mountain piled to my hat- 
brim — " Boss, if you know where the Pelham is, 
and 11 show me how to take this gent there, I -11 
take you and your missus to the Williams for only 
one buck each. I seen the Williams this after- 
noon, and I can find it again ; but I ain't got the 
lay of the rest of the town much yet because I 
only got here with this old boat of mine from 
Bristol, Pennsylvania, late last night." 

All through that night we drove, and the final 
fare was far from one buck. At the Williams, 
the Pelham, and so on up the alphabet, I stood 
before the room clerks just long enough to ask for 
a room, listen a moment as the clerks broke out 
into hearty laughs, and turned around and 
walked right out to the waiting taxicab again. 
From the Anacostia west and north we went all 
the way up to the edge of the Georgetown timber- 
line, and back and forward and back again. 

Day broke. I awoke with a start. Inside the 
taxicabin my wife slept, oblivious. At my elbow 
the taximurderist was snoring steadily; and 
steadily the car was running, around and around 
and around Dupont Circle. It seems that the 
chauffeur, finding that we both had succumbed 
to weariness an hour before dawn, had artfully 

31 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

set the steering-wheel so that the car would con- 
tinue to loop itself in slow rings around Admiral 
Dupont until daylight should appear ; and he had 
fastened the steering-gear (after learning by ex- 
periment just how far to the left it should be 
twisted) by piling our luggage firmly around the 
tiller. Then he had snuggled down into his 
raccoon coat-collar and had turned in. 

I awakened him. 

" On one of these swings around the circle/' I 
suggested, " let 's take a chance and dart right 
out into any of these streets and go to some other 
part of town, what? W^e have much to do: we 
have to check this baggage some place, put on the 
breakfast nose-bag, and then start all over to 
look for a room. Here 's a likely-looking avenue. 
Shoot I " 

And in no time we had set ourselves back 
twenty dollars, which the chauffeur concluded 
was fair enough for having put us up for the 
night, and in front of a great hotel I aroused the 
wife. Out the hotel door at that moment came a 
young ex-mayor of New York, who had just come 
to Washington to get a majority commission as 
an aviator. He was sleeping on a couch indoors, 
he told us, at the foot of the bed of a friend, also 

32 




I took liim Ix'hiiid a ]»illiir and ga\r liim a tip 



KNOCK!— AND IT SHALL BE OPENED 

from Manhattan, who had taken him in at a time 
when nothing seemed left to the ex-mayor but a 
park bench. The bedroom was a small one and 
lacked a bath, the ex-mayor went on, but he 
kindly insisted that there was still enough vacant 
floor space upon which I might pile our luggage 
temporarily, or until we had secured some sleep- 
ing-quarters. And after that the wife and I 
had one of those simple old lovely Southern 
breakfasts for |4.80, and we sat there and sipped 
our coffee silently for a long, long time, thinking 
thoughts of the day's campaign. 



33 



CHAPTER II 



THERE are only three ways of getting sleep- 
ing-quarters in the national capital when 
one and one's wife start out on a trip to see the 
war-whirl in Washington these days, especially 
when one and the wife debark, unannounced, 
round midnight from a train which, on the sol- 
emn promise of the compiler of the railway- 
schedule, is due to reach the Union Station, 
Washington, at the velvety, Avistful, cocktail hour 
of twilight. In the first place, one may spend 
the first night snatching bits of sleep in the 
meterless " taxicab " — rechristened an Auto-To- 
Hire — between fruitless visits to all the hotels 
there are, which was what the wife and I did; 
secondly, one may start out bright and early 
the next morning and begin by cruising back over 
the hotel route again to find any sort of Wash- 
ington hotel room and bath, ending up, if one is 
lucky, by finding them in Baltimore, which was 

34 



ROOMS, EUM AND RUCTIONS 

what the wife did; and, finally, one may spend 
the second night sleeping in a Washington bar- 
room, which was what I did. 

It was the first time I had ever slept in a bar- 
room all night. Since the previous November 1, 
or the date upon which Congress had spread a 
big blue blotting-pad all over the District of 
Columbia and had rubbed the district as good as 
dry, the particular hotel bar-room in mind 
had n't been a practical bar-room to the extent 
of using it for alcoholic illuminating purposes. 
Still, the clerk of the hotel, which is on a Four- 
teenth and K Street corner, continued to speak 
of the room as a bar in a sentimental, fondly 
reminiscent way, in tones one uses when speak- 
ing of " grandpa's room '' long, long months 
after the dear old gentleman has perished. 

This clerk, like all Washington hotel clerks in 
war-time, had laughed heartily when asked for 
a room and bath; then a softer emotion seemed 
to grip him, and he began to talk sentimentally 
about ^^ our bar." It was below-stairs, in the 
basement, he said, and seven beds had been 
placed therein only that very morning. For two 
dollars, the clerk continued, I might sleep all 
night in the bar. He added that I could take it 

35 



THE WAR- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

or leave it, and he contributed the additional in- 
formation that it would cost a great deal more 
than two dollars to sleep all night in a bar-room 
in any other town between New York and Sau 
Francisco, which is doubtless true. 

The wife, of course, could not sleep there. 
Nevertheless, I decided to take an option on one 
of the two-dollar bar beds, which the clerk said 
I might do by paying something on account ; say, 
two dollars on account. Then followed a weary 
day of room-seeking, varied with real thrills 
every time the flivver of a war contractor, headed 
toward the Treasury to dig another scuttleful of 
money out of the bins in the Treasury basement, 
exploded past the eyelashes of anotlier lineal 
descendant of Captain Kidd who was navigating 
our meterless " taxi."" The hastening contract- 
ors hit us only twice that first day, and they were 
good enough to scatter their shots so that one 
contractor hit the wife's side of our Auto-To- 
Hire, damaging hor mud-guard, whereas the 
other contractor slammed in on my side of our 
car, thus avoiding all jealousy, and hit me back 
of the Pension Office. 

Too much was enough. Half a dozen squares 
to the east of the Pension building loomed the 

36 




»T^ 








^&> ^ 






/''^<iW._ 



^7' 



-s,' 



to 

h-1 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

Union Station. There we repaired forthwith, 
and by telephone the wife got in touch with the 
Baltimore Young Woman's Christian Associa- 
tion and a room. I had just time to grab off a 
seat for her in an outgoing day-coach of one of 
the late afternoon sections of the Washington- 
Baltimore Liquor Local, w^hich reaches Balti- 
more just before the dinner-hour, and is known, 
I believe, to some of the district natives as the 
Martini Flier, and by many more as the Bronx 
Express, each according to taste. Anyway, this 
particular aperitif section was ready to get under 
way toward the dinner-hour; so the wife and I 
parted regretfully, but cheered by the realiza- 
tion that temporarily, at least, w^e would have 
comfortable sleeping-quarters; the wife in the 
Baltimore Y. W. C. A. and I in the Washington 
bar-room. Fair enough ! 

With no sleep so far on our little pleasure- 
jaunt since leaving the old home in Manhattan 
the day before save the occasional taxinaps on 
the previous night's cruise of the city in search 
of a room, I w^as keen for my bar-room bed the 
minute the wife had departed on the Baltimore- 
bound Liquor Local. But the uncertainty of 
our future housing accommodations during our 

37 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

prospective Washington visit caused me to spend 
what was left of the day and evening searching 
the widths and depths of Washington in a last 
effort to find quarters. Betimes I broke the 
monotony of my lone motor-ride by telephoning 
to the houses of friends who had rented homes in 
Washington in ante-bellum days, and were still 
able to pay bellum rents. As I made my identity 
known to said friends over the wire, the news 
that I was in Washington was about as welcome 
as a coal bill in father's Christmas mail. One 
might have thought, to judge from the cordiality 
of the voice without the smile at the other end 
of the telephone line, that I was Billy Sunday 
calling up a friend and accidentally getting in 
touch with the Distillers' League. 

One could n't, however, blame these Washing- 
ton friends : that thought, long ago struck off, to 
the effect that " Providence provides us with our 
relatives, but, thank Heaven! we can pick our 
own friends," doesn't work out in Washington 
as well as once it did. In times like these, for 
instance, young Brother-in-law Horace, junior 
at Yale if he had gone back the autumn after 
the war declaration, decides to leave the dear old 
col flat on its back in New Haven and go down 

38 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

to WasJiington and look around for a govern- 
mental job, where he can grapple with some big 
work that requires brains and untiring energy 
and all that sort of thing. So in drops Horace, 
accompanied by much luggage, and stays at 
Brother-in-law Elmer's house, out Chevy Chase 
way, while looking for the best job in the army, 
navy, or civil department which will enable him 
to bring the kaiser to his knees, yelling for help, 
in the shortest possible time. And Horace has 
scarcely settled subacutely in the guest-room 
when young Cousin Estelle, the celebrated 
Philadelphia stenographer, comes to take the 
room opposite the one Brother-in-law Horace has 
commandeered, Estelle also in search of a job 
where she can save the nation. When a brand- 
new population about the size of a manufactur- 
ing city like South Bend drops in unexpectedly 
upon a small-sized large town, already comfort- 
ably filled, such as Washington, there are bound 
to be a few crates of relatives in the consignment. 
Consequently the residential sections of the na- 
tional capital early in the war had become an 
omnibus family reunion, wherein pop and mom 
soon were all fed up with visitors. 

" Come up and see us one day while you 're 
39 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

here/' tliey said over the telephone to me, with all 
the warmth of Charles Evans Hughes opening 
his front door and finding a delegation of Cali- 
fornia voters on the front stoop. Now if they 
had only asked me to come up even for one night 
I might have given three rousing cheers. Not a 
chance. Still, I hold no grudges ; they 're more 
to be pitied than censured. 

All that was left for me to do was to hang up 
the receiver, climb into the old seagoing pirate 
craft, Auto-To-Hire, and pull up the mud-hook 
again. The later the hour, the more that bar- 
room bed invited ; but before giving up and turn- 
ing in I tacked around circles and squares and 
in and out avenues and streets long enough to 
learn that in a war-time Washington there are, 
to wit: hall bedrooms (or if-you-can-get-'em hall 
bedrooms) of an ante-bellum rental of ten dol- 
lars a month which suddenly have puffed up into 
bellum if-you-can-get-'ems at forty and fifty dol- 
lars a month; that very swagger houses, which 
recently w^ere rented for ten thousand dollars a 
year now bring twenty-five thousand dollars 
yearly; that one lady, who had had an unfur- 
nished apartment for which she paid ninety dol- 
lars a month, had patriotically rented the rooms, 

40 



KOOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

furnished, during the first war winter at a rate 
of only five hundred dollars a month, pocketing 
three thousand dollars for six months as her slight 
bit toward winning the war; that ante-bellum 
furnished apartments in the hundred and fifty 
dollars a month class bring very often three hun- 
dred and fifty dollars and more a month in 
bellum days; that befo'-de-wah — ouh wah — 
flats, unfurnished, at seventy-five dollars now 
commonly are rented at two hundred and twenty- 
five and two hundred and fifty dollars furnished. 
About the only government priority certificate 
which a man of influence cannot get is a priority 
certificate for a room and bath. 

Just three persons came to notice on that first 
day of cruising who seemed ecstatically happy 
over the sudden swamping of their home town. 
The three were young government clerks of 
vision. With the first of the war-time onrush 
the three had taken a running leap at the throat 
of a renting agent, and had corralled three vacant 
apartments, paying all of thirty-five dollars a 
month for each of the flats. Then they had raced 
into the nearest instalment house, and had 
carted away to the three vacuous flats enough 
bilious-looking yellow oak furniture to cause the 

41 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

late William Morris to turn three times rapidly 
in bis grave. And as most government em- 
ployees round Washington seem to be able to 
knock off work about noon each day and keep 
absolutely out of the war until 2:30 o'clock in 
the afternoon, the three, within a luncheon 
" hour," had so thoroughly rented their, in a 
manner of speaking, furnished flats that there- 
after they have been splitting up almost five hun- 
dred dollars rent profits monthly into three piles. 
Now they stand in front of the Treasury daily 
and laugh and laugh and laugh at it. 

A late-arriving visitor can in a pinch, of course, 
look up a Turkish bath; but what's the use? 
There was the famous coal-baron magnate who 
came to Washington in recent days to confer 
with Fuel Administrator Garfield. When late 
in the afternoon the conference was ended, the 
coal magnate of millions decided to stroll toward 
one of the large hotels and casually select a 
pleasant room and bath, just like that! And 
some time after midnight, still sleepily seeking 
a room that was not, the magnate saw an electric 
lighted "Turkish Bath" sign in G Street. 
Down in the basement depths he came upon a 
bath as full as three aces and a pair of kings. 

42 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

There was one barber-chair still vacant, how- 
ever; the other chairs in the tonsorial salon of 
the baths had, hours earlier, been rented out for 
sleeping-quarters. And the coal magnate of mil- 
lions, breathing a night prayer of tearful thank- 
fulness, peeled off his coat and collar and climbed 
into the only vacant barber-chair berth and slept 
whatever sleep of innocence still is permitted to 
a coal-baron magnate. So far as can be learned, 
Washington has n't yet begun to rent sleeping- 
spaces on the bootblacks'-chairs, but the war is 
young yet. Nor in dentists'-chairs. The chauf- 
feurs of the Auto-To-Hire cars, freshly arrived 
from far scattered cities, to be in on the pickin's, 
were sleeping nightly, however, in their one-time 
taxicabs early in the war-days, even when the 
taxibrigands could find nothing in the way of a 
garage roof but the clear, cold skies of night. 

When one stops to think that about the time 
America jumped into the war- whirl there were, 
all told, only about eighty-five persons in the 
offices of the Ordnance Department, including 
everybody from the boss to the office boy, and 
that before the following Christmas there were 
in the same department in Washington about 
thirty-five hundred souls, which promises to be 

43 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

closer to ten thousand by the time these lines 
stagger into print, then one must see that this, 
l)lus a like swelling of forces in innumerable 
other governmental departments, early resulted 
in a considerable hatful of new white folks 
around town. A couple of Easter bonnet-boxes 
would have housed the Ordnance Department, 
even as late as two years after General Leonard 
Wood had begun to say it was utterly impossible 
for America to keep out of the w^ar. Then 
shortly after it began to dawn upon Washington 
that General Wood not only was right, but could 
produce the papers and prove it, more than a 
dozen shed-like buildings, each a city square 
long, had to be thrown together down round 
Sixth and D streets, N. W., to house the ord- 
nance forces. The figures should n't be disturb- 
ing. Washington always was a glutton for 
numerals of magnitude, and with the present 
jump in population, and trifles such as the bil- 
lions voted every few minutes by Congress for 
something or other urgently needed, figures are 
flying in a war-time Washington which, at least 
by comparison, make even the grand total of the 
" Games Lost ■' column of the Washington base- 

44 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

ball team almost look positively paltry. By the 
time I had finally headed toward my first, and 
last, sleep in my semi-private bedroom and bar 
in the little hotel in Fourteenth Street, it 's safe 
to say that the only vacant thing to be found in 
all Washington was the German embassy, which 
is still respected as an embassy, although empty 
— respected, one might say, a hodderned sight 
more than w^hen it was n't empty. 

And so, when I had the taxitiller turned to 
head me toward my bedroom bar or bar-room 
bed, whatever the term is, the sum total of my 
twenty-four-hour quest for a room was the exact 
knowledge that the late Count von Bernstorff's 
bed in the German embassy was vacant. Now, 
as I 've intimated, my bedroom bar had ceased 
functioning as a practical bar, having curled up 
into a little dry wad and perished on the eve of 
the previous November 1. When I told the 
night clerk that a day clerk, in exchange for one 
of those new two-dollar bills that fool one into 
thinking it's a hundred-dollar note, had given 
me at least a promise that I might use one of the 
seven beds in the bar, the night clerk first offered 
his congratulations and then opened the hotel 

45 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

safe and locked therein my watch and whatever 
change the Auto-To-Hire bandit chief had let me 
have back. 

I had been leaning lightly against what I had 
mistaken for a black-walnut newel-post upon 
which, so I supposed, some one had thoughtlessly 
hung an admiral's dress uniform for the night. 
The clerk shook this entire upstanding arrange- 
ment into wakefulness while I still leaned 
against it. Sure enough ( or, " Yes, indeed," as 
Washington would say it), it was a long, slim 
half portion of smoked ham, garbed in the uni- 
form of a bell-boy. Him I followed warily down 
a semi-dark stairway, thence behind a furnace, 
or maybe it was in front of the furnace ; and so, 
ever onward, past piles of baggage, crates of 
empty milk bottles, a door pathetically labeled, 
" Wine Room — No Admittance ! " 

Finally, within a dark interior, the bell-hop, 
now clearly planning to wake up, turned on a 
lone electric bulb, which was just above the only 
unoccupied bed in the bar-room. In addition to 
the swaggerest-sized mirror I had ever slept in 
front of, there were four little white iron beds 
sticking out from one wall, with the bed I was 
to sleep in and two more jutting into the room 

46 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

from the opposite wall. And from the scents 
and sights and the all-penetrating tonal quality 
of snore sounds generally, I decided that either 
the room had been surreptitiously used as a bar 
until a very recent moment, or that all six of 
my unknown sleeping companions were a group 
of little pals who had just got in on a homebound 
excursion section — after an evening in the 
Monument City — of the Washington-Baltimore- 
Washington Night Liquor Local. 

I had guessed right twice. The four in the 
beds across the room were gone beyond recall; 
I might have practised for an hour on my slip- 
horn, which I do in our apartment-house in New 
York nightly for at least an hour before turning 
in, and they never would have come out of their 
state of coma. But the two intellectuals on my 
side of the room evidently were putting up a 
better battle ; in fact, one of them came to suffi- 
ciently to reach out for what remained of a quart 
bottle beside his bed, once he had glimpsed a 
stranger beginning to undress in his boudoir, 
and hastily tucked the glassware under his pil- 
low. I got only a glimpse of the bottle, but I re- 
member being impressed with the fact that the 
label of the bottle was decorated with either three 

47 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

or five stars, and therefore probably was the 
property of at least a general, perhaps a ranking 
full admiral. 

" They had n't ought ta done it ! " 

The sudden words, their very pathos, coming 
as they did from the dim corner occupied by the 
third bed on my side of the room, caused me to 
whirl round and peer sharply beyond the bed of 
my full admiral neighbor. It was my neigh- 
bor's brother intellectual who was speaking, gaz- 
ing the while at a framed advertising lithograph 
on the dim far wall, a picture representing the 
late Christopher Columbus, all togged out in red 
tights and things and quaffing a man's size 
seidel of some sort of Columbus, Ohio, beer on 
the sands of San Salvador. Long the man gazed 
at the lithograph, and his head began to droop, 
and gently he started to weep. He was crying, 
he told us between sobs, because Christopher 
Columbus, that greatest of Amurican admirals, 
that dauntless genius among sea-captains, that 
mighty discoverer who had given a world to the 
world, had been sent back to Europe in chains. 

" They had n't ought ta done it, Billy," he 
sobbed. " Billy, I leave it to you. As man to 
man, am I right or am I wrong? " 

48 




And th«' loal niatiiiiitc clinibod into tlic (»nlv vaiaut bait)er-chair 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

Then I knew I was in a bar-room. One may 
be led, blindfolded, into a boiler factory, a 
stamping-mill, a Broadway cabaret, or even a 
Democratic convention, and perhaps be unable 
to cry out while sightless the nature of the in- 
stitution; but let one be led, sightless, into a 
gathering where one overhears the stock ques- 
tion, " I leave it to you. As man to man, am I 
right or am I wrong? " then one is n't possibly or 
probably in a bar-room. It is a bar-room. As 
best we could we soothed him. His sobs over the 
ill-treated Columbus grew fewer, and at last he 
lay asleep, great tear-drops gemming his lashes 
as he slept a sweet sleep as if of childhood, 
tousled locks spreading in care-free fashion over 
a tear-wet pillow just beneath another lithograph 
entitled, " Learning Baby to Dance." 

There 's the great trouble with these bone-dry 
towns like Washington and Charleston and Ban- 
gor ; a lot of the folks take to drink. 

For a long time I lay awake in the basement 
darkness of the bedroom bar, thinking about the 
new wonders of this war-born Washington. Too 
long it had been merely the mecca of brides and 
grooms and job-hunters. To the whole people, 
for more than a century, it had been simply a 

49 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

seat of government. And now in a day it had 
become, now and forever, not a mere interesting 
real-estate site upon which by chance had been 
piled enough freestone and marble to house the 
seat of government, but the capital of the whole 
nation. 

And as I thought this wondrous new-born 
capital over, I began to feel a bit sorry that I 
had taken the wife with me to view it. The 
wife is so irreverent — and everything. She has 
a pesky habit of knowing what she likes and 
saying so out loud. Now I, like all the rest of 
the hundred million except the wife, believe that 
everybody running the war is a great statesman, 
general, executive, even if he is n't, for that 's 
patriotism; but the wife! Even the short 
glimpse she had had that day, before starting for 
Baltimore, of the new Washington at war had 
caused her to say things that made me blush for 
her. Her caustic comments on the most trifling 
things gave me deep distress. The weird and 
unauthorized fur collars fastened to the sup- 
posed-to-be uniform overcoats of the newly 
created officers of the very new army; glinting 
spurs attached to the boots of right-off-the-shelf 
lieutenants in the aviation service — she stormed 

50 



BOOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

because the very best that the foremost poster 
draftsman of the whole country could turn out 
were lithographs which in thought and composi- 
tion and general technic climbed to the sublime 
intellectual heights of a peaches-and-creamy show 
girl, garbed variously in the third-act clothes of 
Columbia or in the uniform of a blue-jacket, who 
seemed to be calling out coquettishly, above the 
gun-throbs and the groans of the greatest of 
world tragedies, '' O Fellahs, Ain't You The 
Mean Things! Enlist To-day, Dearie!'' 
Heavens! how I dreaded what she would say, 
once we had penetrated further and had begun 
to stumble into the tangles of red-tape, the petty 
party politics and a general scheme of war pro- 
gram teeming with all that unity so noticeable 
whenever a Kansas tornado hits a Saturday 
night performance of the circus. 

It 's impossible to convince the wife that the 
truly patriotic should sit tight and say nothing 
when, to take an example, the Government insists 
upon saying, "Is this potential appointee the 
best Democrat (or Republican, as the case may 
be, and in former wars often was) to handle this 
big war job?" instead of simply asking, "Is he 
the best man to handle this big war job?" 

51 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Again and again I 've told the wife that the ap- 
pointment of a given Democrat, instead of a given 
man, will at its worst merely result, say, in the 
unnecessary deaths, perhaps, of a few thousand 
young men in army camps or at the front. I 
try to show her that if nobody tries to right 
existing wrongs, the war may be prolonged, but 
in the meantime everybody will enjoy the sub- 
lime ethical satisfaction of knowing that he and 
all his compatriots have been intensely patri- 
otic. " Pooh ! " says the wife. " The trouble 
with you and the rest of the patriots of Bro- 
midia is that you confuse criticism of a stuffed 
shirt in office with the office itself. If the people 
of New York impeach a governor and kick him 
out, how can such action be construed as even 
remotely a reflection upon the great office of 
Governor of New York? " 

She 's hopeless. I don't go so far, of course, as 
to carry these ideas of patriotic silence into my 
wool-sponging business in lower Broadway; 
none of my fellow-patriots does, because that 's 
an entirely different matter, into which patriot- 
ism does n't enter. Or when I go to a ball-game 
at the Polo Grounds in New York with the rest 
of the fans on a Saturday afternoon. If I see 

52 



EOOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

the shortstop repeatedly come close to losing the 
game by booting the ball all over the infield, I 
just climb right npon my hind legs back of third 
base and start the yell, "Take him out! Kill 
'im ! " 

Doubtless, if the great managerial base- 
ballist, Mr. John McGraw, should insist, day in 
and day out, upon retaining a player who per- 
sistently impeded the pennant progress of my 
beloved Giants by booting the ball from Satur- 
day to Monday to Saturday, I 'd be ready to head 
a committee that would lock up Mr. McGraw 
forever and then throw the key away. Such 
extreme measures would undoubtedly bring 
dov/n upon my head accusations of a disgraceful 
lack of loyalty toward the revered Giants, but 
the measures would go a long way toward win- 
ning the pennant. 

The wife not only agrees with me in such mat- 
ters as keeping office politics out of my wool- 
sponging business, or in my outspoken criticism 
around the house when we get a cook that can't 
cook, in all these little ideas that have to do with 
efficiency in our own small systems of domestic, 
business, and social economics; but she also, 
alas ! goes to the extreme of standing right up in 

53 



THE WAR-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

meeting and insisting that even the Government 
of the United States, from the President down, 
in war-time should cut out office politics, ineffi- 
ciency, red-tape. And I tell her, everybody we 
know tells her (everybody, at least, among our 
patriotic friends who still speaks to her) that 
she 's no true American and ought to be ashamed 
of herself. 

The important matter of the price of prunes 
in a Pennsylvania Avenue hotel restaurant, 
w^here we breakfasted after our all-night Auto- 
To-Hire search for a room, started the wife off 
on one of her distressingly unpatriotic tantrums. 
The hotel management, in a noble effort to help 
win the war by conserving food, charged the wife 
and me five cents a prune, five prunes in a saucer, 
at twenty-five cents per i^rune order, or fifty 
cents for our total of ten prunes. I was morti- 
fied to death the way she w^ent on. 

" Waiter," she said with cold finality, as if 
the poor waiter were to blame, — " AA^aiter, I 
have only this to say : You may report back to 
your chief, with my compliments, that I said in 
passing that even if Jess himself is the Willard 
that owns this hotel, he couldn't CARRY fifty 
cents' worth of prunes ! '^ 

54 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

Now as I lay awake in tlie darkness of my 
bedroom bar and recalled all she had said at that 
breakfast-table, I tried to excuse her on the 
ground that a more or less sleepless night in the 
good ship Auto-To-Hire had caused her to go to 
irritating extremes. Whatever the cause, once 
the wife had disposed of the prune incident, she 
had rambled on, I remembered sleepily, with an 
unpatriotic harangue that was most obnoxious. 
The very head-lines on the Washington morning 
papers, lying face-up beside our plates, had 
seemed to goad her on. Why this? Why that? 
I recalled that I had blushed crimson while she 
raved. 

" Shucks ! Starting out to capture Berlin, 
and the whole darn country can't dish up enough 
unity of action in two weeks of effort to carry 
one quart of coal three quarters of a mile across 
the Hudson River to our flat. Oh, hush your- 
self! I could see the loaded coal-cars, I tell you, 
on the Jersey side of the river from the windows 
of pa's apartment on the drive. Lookit this 
newspaper head-line here: ^ Mrs. Macgilli- 
cuddys-Reeks, Sinn Fein Leader, Received At 
White House.' Sickening! This is a fine time 
for the President to encourage German propa- 

55 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ganda by — o-o-o-o-oh, I — will — not — hush 
— up ! This Siun Fein person is violently pro- 
German; says so in effect from platforms; so 
ai'e all her little group of co-workers. I 'd like 
to see her and her crowd ring the door-bell down 
at Oyster Bay, that 's all I They have the impu- 
dence to stand up in halls paid for out of Ger- 
man funds, admission free, in New York, Mil- 
waukee, Chicago, everywhere, with a lot of Ger- 
mans filling the front seats, and the whole crowd, 
even while our boys are fighting Germany in 
France, cheering wildly every time a speaker 
tells of German victories. Less than a month 
ago this same woman who was ' received at the 
White House ' yesterday was the star speaker at 
a pro-German meeting in Terrace Garden, back 
home, where a country-woman of hers had girls 
pass the hat through the aisles for ' silver bul- 
lets,' as she called the collection, to be fired 
against our most powerful ally. They want our 
biggest ally crushed, smashed by Germany, 
which means that our American boys fighting 
beside the Tommies would have to be smashed, 
too; leaving us, with England gone, to fight it 
out with Germany and her allies single-handed, 
or be crushed and smashed ourselves." 

56 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

The wife was going on strenuously, even for 
her. All that she said was true, for together we 
had gone, out of curiosity, to their meetings. 
Nevertheless, at the breakfast-table I had felt 
that it was frightful taste to criticize the Presi- 
dent himself this way for making a formal fuss 
over the pro-German Sinn Fein leader. The 
wife, being a mere woman, did n't stop to think 
that the administration doubtless had had some 
excellent reason for its semi-official recognition 
of a dangerous enemy group which, backed by 
Germany, constantly seeks to cripple our great- 
est ally. I had managed, I remember, to wedfe 
in a word to the effect that maybe the administra- 
tion, in its wisdom, had merely received the Sinn 
Fein leader in order to proffer thereby a tiny bit 
of flattery to a more or less imaginary vote, 
which might help the party at the next congres- 
sional elections. The wife exploded. 

" Votes ! Ugh again ! Flatter a crowd that 
jumped up with cheers — you were there and 
heard 'em, too — right in Carnegie Hall, weeks 
after we had gone to war, at the mere mention 
of German successes over England, and with a 
Justice of the New York Supreme Court, born 
in Middletown, New York, — greatest Irish 

57 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

liberator ever born in Orange County, I call bim, 
— presiding on tbe stage as cbairman and never 
so mucb as reproving tbem. Let 'em work witb 
Germany and start tbeir uprisings at home if 
they think they 'd rather have a Prussian prince- 
ling as their lord lieutenant than a Britisher; 
that 's their own affair. Whether they know it 
or not, they 're striking the high spots in a Ger- 
man propaganda in America that w^as started 
w^hen Prince Henry of Prussia came right here 
to plant a tree down at Mount Vernon, the prince 
sticking round long enough to plant a whole lot 
of other things also. The New York police had 
to chase the whole caboodle of 'em off their soap- 
boxes in Herald Square months after we 'd gone 
to war. Now their German backers will chuckle 
out loud, and the whole troupe will start in with 
new courage, on the strength of the fact that the 
White House has made a fuss over their prima 
donna. If I were President, I 'd tell the whole 
impudent crew to skedaddle back to the country 
they refuse to live in, but which evidently means 
a whole lot more to them than America does — 
that, or to stop kicking up a sentimental uproar 
around here that does n't concern us and only 
impedes our own important war business. 

58 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

" ^ Shortage In Motor-Trucks For Army/ 
Lookit that head-line! And you know as well 
as I do what happened in this very town of 
Washington when our Cousin Ed came down 
here months ago in the interest of the Mac Motor- 
Truck, or whatever the name of the firm is he -s 
with now. Forgotten it? Well, you just listen. 
Our Ed went to the general, or whatever you go 
to here, and said his firm wanted to get the 
merits of their truck before the army authorities. 
And what did this general, or whoever the army 
truck man was, tell him? That the army 
could n't even consider Ed's truck. ^ And why 
not? ' our Ed asked, knowing that his truck ad- 
mittedly was one of the best on the market. 
* Because your truck is n't listed with us, and 
the department does n't permit firms to bid on 
truck contracts unless they 're on our list.' 
'And how does a firm get its truck listed, Gen- 
eral? ' ' Why,' this General said to our Ed, ' you 
have to take one of your stock trucks all the way 
down to the testing-ground in Texas and run it 
two thousand miles under certain specified con- 
ditions. Then if a test shows it 's up to the re- 
quirements, your truck will be listed.' ^ Easy, 
General/ our Ed says. ' My firm '11 have as 

59 



THE WAR-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

many stock trucks as the army wants shipped 
right down to Texas for the try-out. We '11 run 
'em to Texas under their own power, if you 'd 
prefer.' * But that would n't help any toward 
getting your truck listed/ says the general to our 
Ed. ' And why not? ' our Ed asked. * Because,' 
answers the general, opening the door for our 
Ed to pass out, — and listen to this answer, 
dearie ; it 's epic, — ^ Because — ' " 

" Because," I interrupted, " regardless of 
what Ed says, I happen to know there 's no 
shortage of motor trucks, so why add Ed's to 
the list? Right now the army 's all fed up with 
'em." 

But steadily she harangued, until I was 
driven almost — but not quite — to the point of 
calling her a pro-German carper. What was a 
mere sufficiency of army trucks in compari- 
son to the sublime feeling (thus I thought 
as I dozed off into the beginning of my bar- 
bedroom slumbers) that had filled me, sit- 
ting there at the hotel breakfast-table, with the 
realization that it is far more beautifully patri- 
otic to be without any trucks than to attempt, in 
the bold way the wife has of doing, unpatrioti- 
cally to goad the Government to the embarrass- 

60 



ROOMS, RUM AND RUCTIONS 

ing position of buying trucks not needed. Of 
course, if I positively had to have such things as 
a lot of army trucks in my own business or close 
up my wool-sponging plant ; and if this general, 
whoever he was, while working for our firm 
showed the door to anybody like the wife's 
Cousin Ed at a time when a sudden business 
rush had sent us hunting high and low for 
trucks; and if one of our managers knew what 
the general had done and did n't kick to the firm 
about it, well, in a private case like that I 
should n't do anything to the general and the 
manager, once I had learned the truth, but open 
our office window and drop both of them eight 
floors to the sidewalk of lower Broadway, pray- 
ing in the meantime that they 'd both land on 
some vital anatomical spot and not on their 
heads. Applying such principles to a war- 
whirling Washington, however, is something else 
again. Be loyal. I 'm with the crowd on that 
slogan. 

And just before I tumbled all the way into 
sleep I breathed a final prayer that we never 
would find a room and bath in Washington. 
Then, said I to myself, I can decently send the 
wife back home, leaving me free to dig, patrioti- 

61 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

cally and alone, tlirougli the cuticle of war-time 
Washington, looking the whole works over in an 
unprejudiced way without the distraction and 
distress of the wife's daily harangue about things 
as they are. I 'd willingly sleep every night in 
the bar-room, sleep ten nights in a bar-room, if 
thereby I 'd get a chance to look things over un- 
interruptedly. 

If the worst came to the worst, if it were pos- 
sible to get rooms in Washington for the wife 
and me, then (so I firmly resolved, just before I 
lost consciousness) I'd put in an entire day 
showing the wife one phase of Washington life 
of a dignity so sublime, so unselfishly patriotic, 
and at the same time so efficient and intel- 
lectually high-minded and awe-inspiring, that 
even she would come from the scene with eyes 
alight and a voice resonantly emotional as she 
spoke her acclaim. I 'd take her to see Congress ! 



62 



CHAPTER III 

WATERj WATER EVERYWHERE, BUT NOT A 
SINGLE DRINK 

TAKE a fountain-pen, not any particular 
kind of fountain-pen, but just one of these 
ordinary first-class pens that leaks, — and thus 
equipped, one will find that in any dry and un- 
fermented city such as Washington is in war- 
times the pen can be adapted to new uses which 
makes it one of the great life-saving engines of 
modern war. 

The possibilities of the fountain-pen in these 
troublous days were demonstrated to me repeat- 
edly during a long forenoon and afternoon in 
war-crowded Washington while I was awaiting 
the return of the wife from Baltimore. I arose 
after a night of more or less sleep in my pet 
abandoned bar-room in the Fourteenth Street 
hotel, and learned the astounding news that we 
could have a room and bath in that same hotel 
later in the day. An aged retired army officer, 

63 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

it seems, who had lived in the hotel for years 
and had tried to stick it out even after Wash- 
ington had gone dry, finally decided to give up 
the fight against frightful odds. The last of his 
own little private stock had begun to peter out, 
and he was in his ninety-first year and rheu- 
matic, and therefore could not journey back and 
forth on the Washington-Baltimore Liquor 
Local to procure the stimulants so necessary to 
one of his years, and he was afraid of the Wash- 
ington drinking water. In recent days his 
thoughts had turned often and oftener to the old 
homestead, w^hich was in some place out on the 
rolling prairies within sight and sound of the 
quaint old church spires and distilleries of his 
native Peoria; and so at last he had decided to 
call an ambulance to the hotel door and start 
back to Illinois to grow to an old age of full, 
mellow beauty. 

The room clerk had told me these details early, 
so that I might have first grab at the vacant room. 
While dressing I had decided that perhaps if a 
Washington room clerk were approached in the 
right way, he might be induced to accept a ten- 
buck bill as a slight token of esteem. In a wide 
range of travel over the country I never had un- 

64 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

covered a hotel clerk who felt the need of a tip to 
urge him on to take an interest in his art, but 
perhaps, so I mused while dressing — perhaps 
the phenomenal conditions of a war-time Wash- 
ington would cause a clerk to break the rule. 
Said conditions, or something, would and did 
not only in that hotel, but even back of the desks 
of some of Washington's hostelries that have a 
national reputation. There 's a fact which 
prospective visitors may well remember while 
the big crush lasts. 

Joyfully I set about the task of telephoning 
the wife the glad news that the venerable army 
officer was on his way to grow old beautifully 
among his old home distilleries. A simple job 
it seemed, this matter of merely entering a tele- 
phone-booth in the hotel lobby and asking to be 
put through to the Baltimore Y. W. C. A. and 
then telling the wife to hurry over to Washing- 
ton. So is raising the Titanic simple. For al- 
most half an hour I waited in the neighborhood 
of the hotel telephone-booths, all of which hap- 
pened to be occupied, in the hope that at least one 
of the patient folk trying to get a local number 
would crack under the strain and quit. Then I 
remembered that one man in Washington re- 

65 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

centlj had hung up a record by spending almost 
three hours in a telephone-booth while trying to 
get the more or less well-known War Depart- 
ment. I strolled down the street and prevailed 
upon the hello girl in a Pennsylvania Avenue 
hotel to begin the preliminaries of trying to get 
the local exchange to call up Baltimore. And 
then I sauntered forth to see the town, first 
leaving my name and address and telephone num- 
ber with the hello girl in case anything ever 
should come of the Baltimore call. 

For, being temporarily a widower, here was a 
splendid chance, perhaps the only one I should 
have, to peer into the workings of the excise dry 
laws in the new war capital of the world. And 
so it was that I came upon the possibilities of 
the fountain-pen, its moral and mental and phy- 
sical attributes as a war necessity. 

He — the unconscious demonstrator of the 
versatility of the fountain-pen — was in a man- 
ner of speaking standing against the worn, but 
beautiful, mahogany of a bar-room celebrated 
for generations in Washington song and story. 
He was sw^aying gently, like a dew-gemmed lily 
nodding impersonally in the glorious zephyrs of 
a morning in the springtime. He was, in fact, 

66 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

by way of being lightly stewed. A squat bottle 
that decorated the mahogany in front of him 
contained one of those non-alcoholic concoctions 
which looks like beer, smells like beer, and tastes 
like beer, but of which it has been truly said 
that, once a thirsty soul has tucked even a 
quart or two of it within him, it " lacks the au- 
thority." It is an amber mixture wearing a 
collar of foam and called " Peevo '^ or some such 
name. 

At a far end of what for generations had been 
a practical bar now stood dreamily a weighty 
bartender who seemed to have a great secret sor- 
row, his back to the myriad conglomeration of 
ancient prints, dingy medals, and badges of his- 
toric interest that littered the wall, dusty relics 
of great Washingtonians, all of a cobwebby dry- 
ness in keeping with the total absence of humid- 
ity that prevailed. His head was bowed, and 
his mind was back, back, back amid the memories 
of the great days that were. With the exception 
of the swaying fountain-pen demonstrator, there 
was no human impediment in a path leading 
from the street door to any point along the bar, 
whereas the last time I had been in that par- 
ticularly historic place I had been compelled to 

67 



THE WAR-WHIKL IN WASHINGTON 

bat my way through a transient population of 
Washington which had come to town to see the 
first inauguration of President Wilson. And on 
that previous visit, so I now recalled, even after 
I had kicked and punched a passage all the way 
from the street curb Indoors to the mahogany 
and brass foot-rail, this same bartender had 
utterly ignored my simple order, doubtless be- 
cause we had n't been properly introduced. But 
now ! Well, now he all but kissed me ; and in a 
manner that was pathos itself he arranged most 
temptingly his little stock of Peevo and Wishee- 
Washo and the rest of the fair, but false, bottled 
goods which a theoretically dry Washington now 
permits the totally dry bar-rooms to sell. On the 
bar beside his pathetic little stock he placed bot- 
tles of catsup, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, 
black pepper, horse-radish, rock salt, vinegar, 
and the other ingredients which a desperate 
Washington has been known to mix together of 
late into a sort of non-explosive TNT and dump 
into a glass of Wishee-Washo to give the bever- 
age some semblance of the old-time kick. 

I had selected a bottle of the Wishee-Washo, 
which wholly lacked authority, and was idly 
sipping the amber inanity when the gentleman 

68 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

of the fountain-pen or pens began to make a fuss 
over me. Our friendsliip took a long leap for- 
ward as he confided to me that once upon a time, 
back in the days of the Hudson-Fulton celebra- 
tion in New York, he had spent almost a whole 
week in my home town of Manhattan, during the 
course of which, believe it or not, he had actually 
been in the same street, Broadway, where my 
wool-sponging business is located. 

"Well, well, well, it's a small world, after 
all ! '' I cried in amazement. I had seized for 
quotation upon the best line in Charles Hanson 
Townees " Ain't Nature Wonderful " because of 
its appropriateness, intoning it with as much en- 
thusiasm as I might have done were the lines 
my own instead of Mr. Towne's. It w^as quite 
evident that the felicity of the line had impressed 
my new friend, for in the midst of his pendulum- 
like swayings back and forth he watched his 
chance until one of his sways brought his lips 
close to my ear. And all this time, remember, I 
was certain that the beverage he was quaffing was 
non-alcoholic. Thereupon he buttonholed me 
with the only hand he had left which was not 
occupied w^ith a tight grip on the bar, and he 
whispered to me to come to the farthest end of 

69 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the bar, where the sadly ruminating barkeep' 
could not hear him. He opened his coat then 
cautiollsl3^ 

Jutting up row on row from every waistcoat 
pocket were countless fountain-pens. From 
cravat to belt-line he looked like a pipe-organ. 
Each of the pens, I noticed, was fitted out with 
one of those little nickel contrivances which, 
when moved in one direction, sucks up enough 
ink immediately to fill the barrel of the pen, or, 
when moved the other way, almost instantly 
causes all the ink in the barrel to spurt back into 
the ink-bottle. 

" There 's no kick in this Peevo stuff, is there. 
Friend?" he whispered. "Friend, I leave it to 
you, as man to man, am I right or am I wrong? 
Now gimme little 'tention. You pour out your 
glass of Peevo or Wishee-Washo — so; then you 
take out man's sized fountain-pen and work 
metal thingamajig so^ and out squirts whole pen- 
ful of lovely pure alcohol into glass of Peevo. 
What 's result, Friend? Result -s a glass of the 
brew, real stuff, that 's got more kick in it than 
all stuff Mr. Schlitz, Pabst, Lemp, 'n' Busch 
could cook up working together. As man to 
man, am I right or am I wrong? " 

70 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

He was right. For a long time we talked 
sadly of the mighty changes brought about by 
the new order of things; of the vacuity of the 
corner bar of the Ebbitt, where the army and 
navy forever had been wont to fight all the bat- 
tles of all history across the mahogany, but now, 
alas ! given over to rows of poi3 bottles and alto- 
gether as festive and riotous as the octogenarian 
reading-room of the Century Club in New York 
on a rainy Tuesday morning; of the once delec- 
table Shoomaker's, down in " the avenue," where 
pyramids of empty old wine-cases, kegs, barrels, 
brave with printed legions of one-time contents, 
but now a mass of lies, lies, lies, still line the 
walls — kegs of air as useful as discarded pea- 
nut-husks, and as tempting, but persisting in lit- 
tering the floor of the ex-bar in a shameless dis- 
play that but adds insult to injury. A sorrow's 
crown of sorrows, fond mem'ries bring to light, 
— gone are the days, — banquet-hall deserted! 
In the midst of life we are in drought. 

Out of my reveries I was started by the voice 
of my friend of the fountain-pens. He was 
speaking in tones thick with emotion. 

" Thazza las' penful I " Carefully and 
thoughtfully he was planning to turn himself a 

71 



THE WAR- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

shade more than ninety degrees and face the 
street door a few feet away. Without the aid of 
a rudder he made the distance, but as he reached 
for the knob he paused and pressed his brow 
against the door-post, and his frame began to 
shake with sobs. '* Injustice! " he apostro- 
phized. " Nuthin' so maddening 's injustice. 
Betcha million dollars first thing I get home 
she '11 say I been drinking ! " Then he crashed 
out. 

It is w^ell that a wise administration of district 
excise matters has seen to it that (a) one must 
have a prescription signed by a physician living 
in Washington before any druggist in the capi- 
tal will so much as consider a request for a bit 
of alcohol, and (b) that one cannot get the grain 
alcohol even then, owing to the fact that the in- 
ternal revenue folk, for months followdng the 
lowering of the Washington lid, held up the de- 
livery of alcohol to the druggists. I know these 
things to be true, because once I had learned 
from my friend of the fountain-pens how far 
even one fountain-pen could go toward changing 
the entire career of a glass of Wishee-Washo, I 
rushed off to the nearest drug-shop and tried to 
trap the druggist into selling me a gallon or so 

72 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

of grain alcohol. I just wanted to trap one of 
these smart Aleck druggist chaps, that 's all, and 
then see to it that the scoundrel was punished to 
the full extent of the law. But, so help me, from 
one end of the town to the other I could n't find 
a doggoned, dodgasted druggist who would sell 
me enough to fill one pen, even though I pleaded 
for almost an hour with one druggist who I 
thought was a friend of mine, who was until he 
refused to do me even so slight a favor as to sell 
me a stingy little penful. 

From time to time between visits to the drug- 
shops I dropped in to ask the hotel hello girl oc- 
casionally whether or not the Washington tele- 
phone exchange persons had yet seen their way 
clear to take up the matter of getting the wife 
to come to a Baltimore end of the wire. On one 
of these visits, made shortly after the noon hour, 
I received authoritative information that the 
matter certainly would be taken up by the day 
shift of operators during the afternoon, or by 
the night shift at the latest. Thus reassured, I 
wandered forth again to look into the drink evil 
as influenced by the prohibition law. Just for 
my own satisfaction I wanted to learn at first 
hand whether the new excise law in Washington 

73 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

was as effective, say, as I had found the same 
sort of law to be when, one hot and thirst-pro- 
voking day the summer before, I had investigated 
thoroughly the working of the dry law in the 
prohibition town of Bangor, Maine. It was just 
as effective. 

I confess that I had arrived in Washington 
fearful that my old friend and boon companion 
of other days, the Rev. Billy Sunday, who had 
come to the capital just ahead of me to save it, 
would suffer the embarrassment of finding Wash- 
ington so free of hard liquor that his work would 
be half done before he could even start in to do it 
himself. Knowing Bill as I do, I grieved to 
think that he would have to suffer the humilia- 
tion of facing great throngs already largely re- 
formed. A fine situation that for Bill to find 
himself in ! And there were other things that 
troubled me, too, deplorable results which it 
seemed to me would inevitably float in the water 
wake of the district's new prohibition measures. 
There w^as the matter, for instance, of the sudden 
compulsory lack of elbow exercise among the 
oflScers of the Army and Navy Club and of the 
mighty statesmen who gather in the one-time 
wet-goods department of the Metropolitan Club. 

74 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

The sudden surcease of cocktails, I feared, would 
cause the serious muscular atrophy of arms right 
and left, especially of good right arms now so 
much needed to win the war. Also, how about 
the social affairs that are a necessary part of a 
national capital's interrelations with the or- 
dained representatives of the other peoples of 
the world? Had the new dry state of affairs 
brought Washington social happenings to the 
drab dreariness of the grape juice carousals 
which once held sway every time William Jen- 
nings Bryan invited all the ambassadorial boys 
and girls to gather round his merry board to 
carry on and raise the deuce generally? 

A short investigation showed that many of 
my fears were groundless. For one thing, I was 
relieved to find on page 59 of the admirable " Re- 
port of Superintendent of Police," which Chief 
of Po-lice Raymond W. Pullman kindly let me 
have, that whereas only thirty -four citizens had 
fallen down-stairs (see statistics headed, "Casu- 
alties—Accidents") throughout the whole Dis- 
trict during the entire dry year of 1916, there 
were forty-seven who tumbled down-stairs fol- 
lowing the enforcement of the general order of 
1917 that a man's place to drink is in the home. 

75 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

How faithfully and patriotically an outwardly 
dry Washington is living up to the letter as well 
as the spirit of an indoor and inwardly wet law 
may be seen by glancing, on the same page of the 
major's report, at the line of statistical figures 
headed, " Accidents — Street Falls." Here one 
learns that 117 Washingtonians fell flat on the 
street and hurt themselves during the wet spell, 
whereas, following the ruling that every one 
must do one's falling down in one's home circle, 
there were only 47 who hit the out-door street 
pavements forcibly enough to need police help 
after the al fresco dryness set in. 

Major Pullman sees fit to point with pride to 
the fact that although there were all of 1701 
Districtites who had to be bundled into the 
hurry-up police-wagon during the soggy months 
of November and December of 1916, there were 
only 507 drunk and dressed-up gentlemen 
dragged before the local calif throughout the 
corresponding dry months of 1917. But does the 
major see fit to explain the patent fact that one 
of his cops may not enter citizens' houses pro- 
miscuously to see what is happening round the 
dining-room buffet? The major does not. Also 
it would be interesting to hear some explanation 

76 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

from Major Pullman regarding a final item on 
his list of " Accidents." The major's statisti- 
cians say that during 1916, or before we went to 
w^ar, there were 55 Washingtonians " overcome 
by gas/' whereas the police report says that in 
1917, regardless of the arrival of more crates of 
orators in Washington than even the capital 
ever dreamed existed, the escaping gas prostrated 
only 45 innocent bystanders, supposing there are 
any bystanders round Washington in these days 
who are innocent. Before closing the major's 
meaty report, it is worth noting that the order 
which changed America's, the world's, greatest 
indoor-outdoor sport entirely, so far as Wash- 
ington is concerned, into an indoor recreation, 
also has had a pronounced effect upon the dusky 
belt that stretches like a ribbon of black velvet 
along the water-front wharves. For in the mat- 
ter of the major's list headed, " ASSAULTS — 
In The Streets," one learns that in the last days 
of the soggy season 207 swarthy gentlemen (see 
subtitle, "Assaults with Razors") settled 207 al 
fresco arguments with the best beloved Afro- 
American weapon, whereas only 124 street 
lyceum debates were brought to a close with 
razors during the corresponding months that 

77 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

dryly wound up the silly old year of 1917. 
A chief difficulty with the excise law which a 
paternal Congress and commissioners wished 
upon Washington is that the law itself is a bit 
befuddled. About the only section in the statute 
which is perfectly clear even to the police is the 
fact that one can't buy a drink. Not even in 
clubs can one get so much as a bottle of beer. 
Not even, even, even, even, even in the National 
Press Club ! In fact, the saddest sight to me of 
the whole world war of sorrows presented itself 
one evening in the Press Club a few months after 
Washington had been blotted dry. It was 
merely the solemnity of a tableau in which a 
ruddy-faced young Congressman, his complexion 
indicating that it was beginning to fade white 
again in spots where a carefully acquired indoor 
tan was bleaching off, sat listlessly splitting a 
bottle of Peevo or Blabblo or some such kickless 
concoction with a girthy newspaper correspond- 
ent throughout a terrifically thrilling game of 
dominoes. What the two were doing out of 
Baltimore so late I cannot explain. The con- 
gressman hailed from the arid regions of Maine, 
the newspaper man from sun-parched South 
Carolina; therefore even their own fond parents 

78 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

back in their native States had no way of fixing 
them up a little bottled snack of the old-time 
home cheeriness and easing it along to their boys. 
Already the representative and the reporter were 
beginning to pick at the covers. Then, toward 
nine o'clock at night, the congressman in wan 
tones asked the correspondent if he wished the 
thrill of a final game of dominoes. For a mo- 
ment the newspaper man mused dreamily, but 
of a sudden his face lighted with the fires of in- 
spiration. 

" Sure ! " he cried, alertly seizing his hat and 
coat and summoning an attendant to call an 
Auto-To-Hire. " Let 's play it on the next train 
to Baltimore." And they went out into the 
night. 

The reassuring figures in Major Pullman's re- 
port concerning the steady increase in the num- 
ber of Washingtonians who fall down indoors 
are undoubtedly accurate. In fact, the sta- 
tistics were backed up recently in a national pub- 
lication, published, I believe, in Chicago, and 
called the Policeman^s Monthly, in an article 
that was beautifully set off with a " half-tone " 
frontispiece entitled, " Washington Police Ser- 
geant Resuscitating a Man Overcome by Water." 

79 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Looking at the subject from even its gloomiest 
side, undoubtedly there was a sufficient amount 
of encouragement in Major Pullman's lists of 
figures to indicate that, after all, there was still 
a lot of unregenerated raw material lying loose 
round the capital, if it could only be coaxed from 
the buffet into the outdoors, for Billy Sunday to 
work upon. Besides, if everything else failed 
Billy, always at hand was the wicked, shameless 
young Uncle Joe Cannon, who still smokes two 
cigars at a time, lighting them ends on ends, 
who still says damn and everything, even for pub- 
lication, still does dance steps at all unholy 
hours in the now solemn lounging-room of the 
National Press Club, altogether dissipating his 
youth in a manner so shocking that the regenera- 
tion of Uncle Joe Cannon alone would necessi- 
tate the building of a yellow-pine tabernacle 
covering a city square and the concentrated ef- 
forts of Billy Sunday's entire repertory of ser- 
mons and all of Homer Rodeheaver's slip-horn 
hymns combined. A hard citizen is Uncle Joe, 
— he admits it, — but just so sure as there is a 
dawning sun to light the homebound path of such 
sun-dodging hawks of night, just so sure will the 
wicked prodigality with which the Hon. Joe 

80 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

Cannon wastes his best days get him in time, and 
get him good. 

Now, as to the matter of the atrophy of the 
good right arms of the distinguished admirals, 
generals, and statesmen, here again a kindly 
providence that tabes care of fools, drunken 
men, and the United States of America has 
stepped in with a substitute arm exercise. All 
day, every day since war began, the right arms 
of the generals, admirals, and colonels are work- 
ing overtime in the calisthenics of the military 
salute. One cannot walk two consecutive feet 
in a war-time Washington, through the streets, 
in hotel lobbies, or the clubs, without stepping 
upon salutable military folk, who range in rank 
from the more or less soldierly looking Private 
Jeb Hooper of Bird-In-Hand, Pennsylvania, all 
the way up to the ecstatic vision of a group of 
ranking British artillery officers, seated in the 
luncheon jam at the Shoreham and all dressed 
up like a broken arm. That copy of Baedeker 
from which the wife, on our trip from New York 
to Washington, had dug up much accurate in- 
formation about a national capital of the vintage 
of 1908 observes that the population of the Dis- 
trict "includes about 40,000 army and navy 

81 



THE WAR-WHIKL IN WASHINGTON 

officers." He 's a great little describer, is Bae- 
deker, but meticulous. Why, in Washington to- 
day there are seemingly fully that many brand- 
new little second lieutenants running loose on 
the range, all rigged out in the crinkly new uni- 
forms so recently off the shop shelves that an 
Irreverent Washington has descended to group- 
ing the new young army generically as *^ the 
Sears-Roebucks." And even if there was no oc- 
casion for this chronic saluting exercises among 
aged army and navy elbows, the war-time prac- 
tice of always wearing one's uniform permits one 
also to carry a pair of field-glasses these days — 
at least to carry the case — without causing em- 
barrassing comment; and field-glass cases come 
vin half-jnnt, pint, quart, and even magnum sizes. 
Then as to elbow exercises among the mighty 
statesmen who, so I had foolishly feared, were 
in danger of atrophy of the biceps when their pet 
cafe counters had ceased to function, all one has 
to do in these days to dispel such idle fears is to 
glance into the Senate or the House and see the 
windmill arms swing wildly and always as the 
great men daily take up their task of saving the 
nation. One does not even have to go into the 
Capitol to be reassured; all one has to do is to 

82 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

stand out on a curbstone of Capitol Hill and 
lean against the noise as the patriots bang their 
oratorical fists on their desks while in the throes 
of the great indoor sport of trying to bat in the 
.350 class of the Patriotic League. 

Finally, as regards the absence of liquid 
tongue-looseners and the effect of the lack of 
them upon social functions, it is only fair to state 
that as a usual thing a social affair in Washing- 
ton is not nearly so dry as, to take a somewhat 
extreme example for comparison, the Great 
American Desert. Washington at war has suf- 
fered a tapering off on the social side, of course. 
Great state dinners have been discontinued; the 
" formal '' dinner or dinner dance in the home 
has almost quite perished, and there is a conse- 
quent weeping and wailing among gown-builders 
and hair-wavers who are beginning to feel the 
pangs of dwindling bank-account. The func- 
tions nowadays run largely to theater-parties, a 
fashion for box-parties probably having been set 
by a President who still makes a practice of go- 
ing to the theater at least once or twice a week. 

Nevertheless, the dining-rooms along Con- 
necticut and Massachusetts avenues have n't 
been entirely scrapped, and since November 1, 

83 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

1917, acceptances are much more easily obtained. 
Not so many mouths ago a Washington host or 
hostess often had difficulty in mobilizing enough 
male eligibles between the social draft ages of 
twenty and sixty to make a mess. The town was 
fed up on the social side. But to-day let the 
word go forth that a potential host has a well- 
stocked cellar of liquid lightning, — and usually 
he has, — and there will be a stampede of old 
and young folk carrying lightning-rods and all 
praying aloud to be struck. They may even ap- 
pear in business suits, a simplified war capital 
for the first time in its history having recently 
ruled that spiked-tailed coats and the rest of the 
sartorial fluffs and feathers are not absolutely 
necessary. 

And so it still happens that a host or hostess 
will stand right up and say, " Let 's give a 
party ! " whereupon a new Washington that 
came into being on that first black November 
day begins to whisper delicately, '^ Do they serve 
the hard stuff in that house? " And if the an- 
swer is, " You betcha they do," that particular 
host is certain of a big mail filled with positive 
replies to his R. S. V. P.'s, and on the night of 

84 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

the great day the line forms in Connecticut Ave- 
nue, right resting on Massachusetts, and extends 
far off into the dry night air. 

All these and many more bits of sociological, 
ethical, political, and scientific data of a like 
international importance I came upon while 
awaiting ofiQcial word that the telephone ex- 
change had caught up with itself sufficiently to 
consider the preliminaries of taking some action 
on my telephone call to Baltimore. By mid- 
afternoon, or within almost as few hours as it 
takes to telephone the corner spaghetti dealer on 
a government-owned line in Europe, I had begun 
to get in touch telephonically with the wife, and 
had broken to her the glad news about the vener- 
able retired army officer who had gone away to 
grow old beautifully amid the rye-fields and 
lovely old distilleries in and around his native 
Peoria. 

Would it not be jolly — thus the wife over the 
telephone from Baltimore — to engage a car and 
motor over to Washington? It would not, I told 
her. Nowadays, as T hastened to point out to 
her, the Old Pike w^hich connects Baltimore and 
Washington is so cluttered up with broken bot- 

85 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ties that no rubber shoe or inner tube can live the 
length of a city square upon that forty-odd mile 
stretch of ground glass. That 's the road over 
which John Wilkes Booth once fled to temporary 
safety, but Booth used a horse. If he had tried 
to skedaddle along it in an automobile while it 
is in its present condition, John's life doubtless 
would have lasted just twelve days less than it 
did. It is an open question, when one adds up 
the weekly cost of the high-priced inner tubes and 
tires destroyed along the Old Pike in these days, 
whether the patriots who dried up the capital 
showed war-time wisdom in their honorable ef- 
forts to save the less costly inner tubing of hu- 
mans from becoming pickled. Maybe yes, maybe 
no. Rubber is scarce, but one always can get 
people. 

" Stick to the steam-cars, old dear,'' was my 
advice to the wife over the telephone. Also I 
was about to add something to the general effect 
that if the wife did happen to decide to bring a 
small flask of Baltimore's leading war export 
with her in her hand-bag, she had better keep an 
eye out for Major Pullman's souse sleuths as 
the train crept into Washington. However, the 
wife being the wife, I decided the advice would 

86 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

be superfluous. Small chance I Smallest chance 
that the wife would remember that the only thing 
standing between us and a sudden chill or some- 
thing was my little, old, black traveling-bag. 
That was now locked up and still partly intact in 
the closet of our new room in the Fourteenth' 
Street hotel, but it was sadly dwindling; so many 
persons settle in Washington in these days from 
so many places that no visitor can w^alk two 
squares without meeting a parched friend from 
the old home town, especially if one gets there 
with a little, old, black traveling-bag. It 's a 
difficult thing to get farther than two squares, 
three at the most, from one's hotel room. One is 
always meeting up with somebody and being com- 
pelled to turn right round and bring the friend 
back to the hotel room and telephone down to 
the desk for a bit of cracked ice. Life is just one 
friend after another. 

But there wasn't a chance of help from the 
wife. And, supposing the impossible, if she did 
get in a little medicinal stock of liquid munitions 
and stow it away in her hand-bag, I 'd bet the 
whole British war loan against a high-wheel 
bicycle that Major Pullman's sleuths, down at 
the Union station, would grab that hand-bag 

87 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

first. I know my own luck. The major does n't 
raid the incoming railway-cars often for smug- 
gled life-saving liquids, even though the new law 
at least is clear to the length of saying that no 
one must bring or have shipped into the District 
any of the bottled laughter of the peasant girls 
of Peoria or Milwaukee unless a written or 
printed notice on the outside of the hand-bag or 
packing-case states the nature of the contents. 
Throughout all the stretch of 1917 that was arid 
the sleuths arrested and seized the hand luggage 
of only fifty-eight incoming travelers from Bal- 
timore, and there was n't a woman in the 
round-up. But if the T\ife had ever tried it — 
well, I know my luck. Besides, one could n't ask 
a lady, even one's own wife, ostentatiously to 
label the facade of her hand-bag with a legend 
running, " This bag is full to the gills." But 
supposing I had dared to suggest such a thing, 
and supposing the wife had even obeyed the label 
law to the last letter, it 's a hundred to one shot 
that some Washington sleuth would have got the 
hand-bag before I did. I know my luck all right, 
all right. 

" Major," I asked the efficient young police 
boss of Washington, *' is n't it a bit ticklish to ar- 

88 




i 



From every waistcoat pocket were countless fountaiu pens 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

rest a new arrival and open his baggage on mere 
suspicion? " 

"Pooh!'' cried the major. "It's a cinch to 
tell if a man comes from Baltimore." 

Just how the major's sleuths attempt to dam 
the rapidly rising flood which steadily liquidates 
into Washington via the cross-country electric 
trolley-line known as the Washington, Baltimore 
& Annapolis cannot here be clearly stated. 
From all accounts the sleuths have to content 
themselves merely with standing round and just 
dam'ing it. The directors of this W. B. & A. 
line include Baltimorians who are among the na- 
tion's stanchest advocates of any prohibition 
measures that are confined to Washington. Not 
so long ago that same W. B. & A. trolley-line was 
earning in the neighborhood of one half of one 
per cent; and skating on ice so thin that some 
of the unbloated bondholders were in a cold sweat 
lest they break through. Their stock had been 
a drag on the market round Baltimore and Cleve- 
land, sticking in the lower regions of six. Then 
war and its horrors burst upon the stockholders. 
Washington went dry. Baltimore stayed wet. 
Washington began to take a new interest in Bal- 
timore. Dryly of a morning, any morning. 

89 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Washington began to jump aboard tlie W. B. & 
A. cars, market-baskets and demijohns under 
arm. Homeward that night sloshed Washington 
again, still via the W. B. & A. The electric 
line's earnings staggered from about one half of 
one per cent, headlong to one, two, six, sixteen 
per cent. Instead of sticking around six, the 
stock burst from its cell with a terrible yell, 
until, by the time the lid had been completely 
nailed down upon Washington, the stock was ca- 
reening toward twenty. Two months later — in 
January, 1918 — it was singing raucously and 
hitting the high spots all the way up to 28%. 
And at last accounts it was yelling with increas- 
ing abandon as it lurched onward and ever up- 
ward, and butting blue-dotted pink elephants off 
the tracks so that more and more cars could whiz 
by. Cars! All the world and its relatives 
did n't have on sale new cars enough to handle 
the business. Besides, to have new cars built 
would cost about three times as much as the 
same cars could have been turned out for just 
before the world went mad. But so great was 
the demand for more rolling stock on the cross- 
country electric line that a purchasing agent of 
the W. B. & A. scouted high and low until finally, 

90 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

hundreds of miles away in the yards of the Long 
Island Railroad Company, he stumbled upon 
fifty-four old cars that the Long Island line had 
as good as scrapped. At only a slight cost for 
refitting them the old cars would be just the thing 
for interurban traffic. Wherefore the W. B. & 
A. snatched up the fifty-four cars at less than 
|350 apiece, and before the ancient rolling stock 
had been delivered to its new owners the W. B. 
& A. bargain-sale purchasers could have sold fif- 
teen of the cars for |20,000, thus retaining thirty- 
nine " new " cars which had cost them less than 
nothing. 

And still there are fat-headed reform folk who 
insist that booze is bad for business ! 

But despite the fast-flying electric-line whiz- 
zers and the Rumhound Unlimited, the Cannon 
High-Ball Express, the many sections of the 
Liquor Local, and the rest of the steam, electric, 
and gasolene traction between the dry belt and 
the wet, the fact remains that it is a weighty 
problem to find a spot in Washington where one 
will be struck by even a casual flash of liquid 
lightning. Even if one owns a flivver of the Tin 
Lizzie model — and everybody in the capital 
nowadays does — which one is n't afraid to sub- 

91 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

mit to the terrors of the bottle-strewn old pike, 
there 's the annoyance of having to buy a District 
of Columbia automobile license as well as a 
Maryland license number for Lizzie before one 
can head eastward over the Pennsylvania Ave- 
nue bridge in the general direction of Baltimore 
and booze, and both licenses are sold at a price 
which would cause a New York or Chicago mo- 
torist deep, perhaps fatal, distress. The District 
of Columbia permits a driver owning a license 
issued by any State in the Union except Mary- 
land to come and go about the capital as he 
pleases without taking out a district license. 
The State of Maryland gives the right of way to 
all licenses of the various States, but refuses to 
admit a District car unless the skipper of the 
car also sports a Maryland license even a flivver 
length inside the State. This condition is the 
outcome of an old, old battle between the Mary- 
land and the District of Columbia automobile 
authorities, and now in these dryish days it is 
breaking the brave, but thirst-ridden, souls and 
hearts of some of nature's noblest gentlemen. 

Then it must be remembered that although all 
of Washington may visit Baltimore some of the 
time, and some of Washington may hang round 

92 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

Baltimore all the time, all of Washington cannot 
be in Baltimore all the time. Washington's 
bankers, brokers, teamsters, statesmen, and mo- 
tormen have enough work to do in these days to 
require their presence in their own bailiwick at 
least a part of every w^eek. Wherefore Major 
Pullman points with pride to the fact that in the 
two months of outdoor dry weather of 1917 there 
was a decrease of seventy per cent, in squiffiness 
and the general attendant cussedness which 
causes ossified gentlemen to begin the day by 
saying, "Good morning, Judge." Even Con- 
gressmen have to stay in Washington a bit and 
do some congressing, and no more can they put 
their feet on the brass rail in or around the Capi- 
tol. Until a day some years ago — it was during 
the czardom of the Tom Reed dynasty — a thirsty 
statesman could submerge into the hard stuff 
that liquidated the House restaurant and, right 
under the Capitol roof, stay submerged and never 
come up for air again until the end of the ses- 
sion if he so desired. And if he did seek the sur- 
face, he could immediately take a high dive again 
to the depths of the alcohol floods in the restau- 
rant under the Senate section. But in the Reed 
regime the House closed its bar, knowing that 

93 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

there was just as good stuff to be had, maybe 
better, in the other restaurant on the Senate 
side. And just for that the Senate, two or three 
sessions later, locked up their bar and hid the 
key, laughing heartily the while at the splendid 
joke they were playing on the House. The next 
instant the Senate, like the House, was wonder- 
ing whether or not the whole proceeding w^as such 
an all-fired joke after all. Right away the pa- 
triots began to spill out of both wings of the 
Capitol, and they raced across the lawns and 
over the asphalt and never stopped running until 
they had fetched up at Engel's or at one of sev- 
eral hotel bars, or at all several eventually, in 
the Capitol Hill neighborhood. But in time 
Engel's was torn down, and with the fearsome 
crash that landed upon Washington in the black 
November of 1917 not even a congressman from 
the State of Maine could find a place to get a 
dram. And if a Maine man can't find a dram, 
it 's because there ain't no such animal. I re- 
member one night w^hile w^aiting between trains 
in Bangor, just while w^aiting betw^een trains, I 
started out w^ith a Bangor policeman as guide 
to — 

But one can't sit round a Washington hotel 
94 



WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE 

room in the gathering dusk of a late winter after- 
noon and recount the horrors of even one night 
in bone-dry Bangor, can't even uncork the gen- 
eral outline of so sad and soggy a tale; not if 
the raconteur ever expects to get down to the 
Union Station in time to greet a wife arriving 
on a section of the Baltimore- Washington Liquor 
Local scheduled to reach Washington in time to 
pick up its regular six o'clock eastbound load. 



95 



CHAPTER IV 

" ALL 'S RIOTOUS ALONG THE POTOMAC ! " 



"^ AY, young fellow/' I said to myself as I hur- 
K3 ried through the gathering gloom to meet 
the wife, " do you know something? " " What? '' 
I asked myself, pausing for a moment in my 
flight. " Just this," I replied. " You 're going 
to get down to the Union Station just in time to 
get smothered in the six o'clock rush hour on 
the way back to the hotel. What do you know 
about that, huh? '' " Oh, ding ! " was all I could 
say, and I hurried on. 

And, sure enough, the wife came through the 
Union Station gate and on to the concourse just 
in time to miss the last Auto-To-Hire in line. 
Wherefore nothing remained for us to do but to 
try to work through a jam around the trolley- 
tracks and await a chance to dynamite an open- 
ing into the heart of the mass play of strap- 
hangers. 

Every super-crowded car that came along the 
96 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

trolley-tracks bit off a piece of the large, round 
edge of the particular mob of which we, the wife 
and I, were a part. There were other mobs scat- 
tered along the pavement in front of the station, 
each of the separate crowds hopeful, like our own 
private mob, that along would come a car that 
did n't bulge outw^ard. And as in time we moved 
an inch to the step from the sidew^alk to a point 
close to the car-tracks T saw that girthy men on 
the fore line of standees were losing coat-buttons 
every time a slow-moving trolley-car got under 
way and slid its length against the front eleva- 
tions of our vanguard. I feared for what might 
happen when the w4fe, who was hopelessly 
wedged in front of me, made that front line. 

" Dearie,'- I cried in sudden alarm, '^ you 
did n't by any chance bring anything from Bal- 
timore that — you have n't anything in your 
hand-bag that 's breakable? If you have, no 
glassware ever will withstand the — " 

" No ; there 's no glassware from Baltimore in 
my bag," snapped the wife directly into the ear 
of the man w^edged in front of her, the closeness 
of the jam making it impossible for her to turn 
her head and address me personally. " I 'd look 
pretty, w^ould n't I, going on such a disreputable 

97 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

shopping expedition in Baltimore! Besides, as 
I 've told you before, the law is the law. We 
must obey it.-' 

And so we stood there in silence a long, long 
time after that. It did n't make happier my 
musings when I recalled that at least we might 
have escaped the terrors of the rush-hour jam if 
the local telephone company had only taken a 
few less hours to put my telephone call through 
to Baltimore. In time we worked at least close 
enough to the passing trolley-cars to enable me 
to take a bit of the curse off the delay by reading 
the frieze of advertisements that stretched along 
the inside of the cars just above the heads of the 
strap-hangers. But even the car advertisements 
would n't let me forget the Washington telephone 
service, for on one of the cards in a passing car 
was a printed appeal, phrased patriotically, 
which said in effect that now was the time for all 
good girls to come to the aid of the telephone 
company to do their bit by accepting jobs as 
hello-ladies. 

Maybe the telephone company had a lurking 
notion that if such an appeal were plastered all 
over the street-cars the public would stop grum- 
bling and in patriotic fashion convince itself that 

98 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

the whole frazzled condition of the service was 
due to war-time labor shortage. Maybe the com- 
pany had that thought in mind; I don't know. 
But I did reflect, as we w^aited our chance to 
board a car, that if ever a corporation ap- 
proached a big business increase with a sour 
equipment with which to try to handle the new 
rush, it was that same local exchange. Like our 
army and navy departments, the Washington 
telephone persons for years had mooched and 
browsed and stumbled along with an equipment 
that was the last word in unpreparedness, w^hile 
cuss words arose from the Anacostia to George- 
town and back again as subscribers and casual 
users of the telephone called for numbers that 
rarely came. 

Then when the present big noise did begin to 
detonate among a lot of official and civil nappers, 
the telephone company, quite as much as the 
newly aroused governmental departments, ran 
up against a shiftlessness among minor em- 
ployees that is the outgrowth of a condition 
which has been peculiar to Washington since the 
city was young. For even the mightiest mili- 
tary-political-social-commercial upheaval of his- 
tory has not yet been able to down altogether 

99 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

one phase of salaried service which for genera- 
tions had been carefully fostered in the City of 
Salaries. Throughout so many years that they 
are uncountable Washington has been looked 
upon by its largest section of salaried folk, the 
government clerks, as a personal sort of very 
rich and easy-going old Uncle Samuel, to whom 
the governmental employee bears the relation of 
an impecunious niece or nephew that Unk should 
support " until something better turns up." 
There you have it, that until-something-better- 
turns-up attitude of rich old link's poor rela- 
tives, who look to him for a fair income, or even 
fairer than that, and only enough work to satisfy 
the conscience. There was a period when the 
office hours of a clerk in the Pension Office, in 
the War, State, Patent, any department, ran 
from the time the youthful patriot decided to get 
to his desk round mid-forenoon until he allowed 
that he 'd put on his hat and go home, which was 
usually a bit after mid-afternoon. Then into the 
capital one day came a middle-aged ex-sheriff 
from Buffalo named G. Cleveland, and one of the 
first things ex-Sheriff Cleveland did, after select- 
ing a White House room with southern exposure, 
was to start right in to hurt the tenderly nur- 

100 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

tured feelings of a large jjart of the Government's 
official younger set by suggesting that the only 
way to be on the job was to be on the job. The 
former Sheriff of Buffalo did n't quite go to the 
extreme of instituting in Washington the na- 
tional pastime of punching the time-clock — a 
pastime common enough in all the nation's busi- 
ness houses except in the country's own main 
w^orks at Washington; but Mr. Cleveland did 
crack the whip with sufficient force to cause an 
instant increase in the sale of ninety-eight-cent 
alarm-clocks all over the boarding-house belt of 
the capital. 

Brute! Simon Legree! The wails of injured 
innocence almost drowned out the grand munici- 
pal buzzing of the alarm-clocks. That growling 
and grumbling of resentment against the curse 
of being compelled to do at least some labor in 
return for one's salary continued on through sub- 
sequent years of peace, and right on up to the 
first w^ar summer, and beyond. One might say 
that the plaintive protest against actual work 
never really reached its high C until the first 
summer of the country's participation in a world 
w^ar. Never before in a century of summers had 
Washington been compelled to sweat its brow 

101 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

during the hot months until the riotous summer 
of 1917 ricochetted into town. Not only the 
much abused government " workers," but the ele- 
vator-boys, waiters, the shop clerks in F Street, 
even the barkeeps who looked gloomily toward 
the fast-approaching surcease of the souse, all 
Washington's permanent force of kid-glove hired 
• hands bitterly resented the indignity of suddenly 
being called upon to do almost as much work in 
a day as any of the business folk in lower Man- 
hattan does in an average morning. And just 
as the Down-trod and Oppressed had begun, to- 
ward the end of the hot months, to grow some- 
what accustomed to working even in summer, 
they began to realize that their labors w^ere piling 
up in direct ratio to the progress and duration 
of the World War; and so they started in upon 
an autumn and winter of discontent. They had 
just about decided to rouse themselves almost 
into wide awakeness — we are considering the 
chronic Washington employee now, not the in- 
flux of men and women who came to town to do 
war work — and to stay almost awake, w^hen into 
their hands fell more and more and more, the 
downpour increasing daily, darn old war busi- 
ness to take care of. And with the increase in 

102 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

AYork came also discontent among lady and gen- 
tlemen laborers in the governmental and com- 
mercial vineyards who had been fairly happy in 
their jobs until they heard exaggerated tales of 
the larger financial opportunities in the offices of 
mushroom growth which war conditions had 
brought about. 

Honest, Maggie, I hope t' die if this old 
switch-board ain't drivin' me to a livin' corpse. 
Gripes, but this job sure is gettin' somethin' 
fierce! And here we set, Maggie, lettin' 'em 
treat us like we was dirt under their feet instead 
of — Yes, sir. I 've told you twicet already, 
sir, I kinnot get you that numbah, being as the 
line is busy. Listen, Maggie ! Ain't we the 
dumb things lettin' 'em treat us like we was dirt 
under their feet instead of pickin' off easy jobs 
like Bertha Higgins and Tillie Hooper and all 
them girls, over in the Red Cross and war places 
like that, for twicet as much as they got here. 
Listen, Maggie. Last Sunday eve I seen Bertha 
with a swell fellah at Poll's, and did n't she have 
on a new fox set that was simply — Don't you 
dast swear over the wire at me, sir! Ain't I 
givin' all my whole day tryin' to get your pahty? 
I don't care who you are; that don't give a 

103 



THE WAR WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

gelmun absolutely no riglit to forget he 's a gel- 
mun and try to get new with me. Listen, Mag- 
gie. He says, " I '11 reeport you to the mang- 
munt and have you discharged ! " Ain't that a 
riot? I should be annoyed with worryin' about 
this old job I And listen. All Bertha Higgins 
did was to go to a night course in the business 
collidge every eve for a few weeks after finishin' 
up her work here every day. Of course her 
workin' in the business collidge so late was the 
reason she was always asleep at the switch here, 
like all them other girls that 's goin' t' night 
collidge ; but look how it 's bettered them in life I 
And listen. Your pahty does not answah, sir. 
Listen, Maggie. That 's what I 'm goin' t' do. 
I 'm goin' to the business collidge just long 
enough t' grab off one of these regular swell jobs 
lyin' loose all over this burg since the war 
started. I kinnot stand this work no longer and 
live, Maggie. And so I 'm goin' t' study for a 
stenographer or somethin', and just stall along 
daytimes on this tele])hone job, like Bertha Hig- 
gins and all them girls, until they 've learned me 
enough at the collidge to land somethin' big. 

And there you are. Back in the dear dead 
days of peace silly old link's nephews meandered 

104 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

aloug as government clerks during a few sunlit 
Lours each day, or just long enough to corral a 
pay-envelop of sufficient fatness to pay the 
boarding-house and clothes bills, and at night 
they studied medicine or law in one or another 
of the night courses in the professional schools 
of the local colleges. For generations they did 
this, often studying until far into the night ; and 
the next day they stalled on their jobs, accom- 
plishing nothing, slept at the governmental 
switch, from exhaustion. A laudable ambition 
theirs, this idea of working up to the ranks of the 
professional men; but the program played hob 
with efficiency. 

Now that the Berthas and Tillies and all the 
rest are coming back to tell their old time asso- 
ciates glorious tales of war jobs, of double or 
triple increase over their former wages, vast 
crowds of the hello-ladies and their sister-work- 
ers in other lines are following in the selfsame 
paths blazed long ago by their brothers in the 
government clerical service. And add to the in- 
completeness of telephone equipment, with not 
even enough sleepy, discontented hello-ladies to 
man the ancient switch-boards, a sudden and 
mighty flood of unexpected business that fills 

105 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

almost every teleplione-booth in town during the 
crowded hours of the day, and the result is chaos. 
Many an impatient military man or civilian has 
been compelled to hang up the receiver in dis- 
gust and deliver personally or by messenger — 
if he be fortunate enough to get a messenger — 
the information which he had hoped to give by 
telephone. 

A government exchange which takes care of 
department calls shows more efficiency, but even 
here there is delay at times. And delay on the 
government lines in days like these is cause for 
concern far graver than the mere commercial 
troubles of the district. For instance, in choos- 
ing a site for the War College some transcenden- 
tal genius had the brilliant idea that it should 
be located about three miles southeast of the 
War Department, — oh, on simply the cutest 
water-front spot ever! — on the same principle 
that causes the field captain of a college foot-ball 
team always to go ofP by himself throughout the 
big game of the season to another foot-ball field 
about three miles away, with the hope of finding 
a telephone line over which he can give his sig- 
nals to the rest of his far-away team. Four of 
the six committees into which the army's gen- 

lOG 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

eral staff — " the Brain of the Army " — is divided 
are located in the War College. But the desk 
of the captain of the whole team, the Chief of 
Staff (who popularly is pictured in the public 
mind as seated at a big desk while surrounded 
by his staff, all working together on mighty war 
problems), is three miles away in the War De- 
partment. And so a chief of staff has been 
known to work steadily at a problem along cer- 
tain lines while his staff, unacquainted with the 
chief's way of progressing, simultaneously are 
tackling the knotty question along diametrically 
different lines. The Chief and his Staff, it is 
true, are bound together by three miles of tele- 
phone wire, but to be connected by telephone, 
especially in days of war-whirling, is likely as 
not to be separated by telephone. 

" The people must economize in telephone mes- 
sages,'' publicly cries the telephone officials of 
the capital. They do ; they have to. ^^ Don't do 
this, and don't do that," continue the harassed 
telephone men, adding a list of economically de- 
vised " Don'ts " which fill half a column of local 
newspapers. " Don'ts '' that are not even hinted 
at in the public proclamations might have been 
added : " Don't, for heaven's sake ! call for ^ In- 

107 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

formation ' in the hope of having a wrong num- 
ber corrected. What 's the use, men? So many 
numbers have been changed so often lately that 
* Information ■ has been sent to the booby-hatch 
for psychopathic observation and a complete 
mental rest." " Don't call a number and expect 
to get it." " Don't add to the general delay by 
following the dear old Southern fashion long in 
vogue in Washington — the fashion which pre- 
scribed that one should drawl, ' Aoh, is this Cen- 
tral? Good mawnin', miss. Ah trust you-all 
aw enjoyin' good health this mawnin'. Now if 
Ah ain't troublin- you-all too much, may Ah ask 
you-all, miss, to prepah to do me a favah in yo' 
official capacity? Get ready, miss. Ah have a 
numbah all ready fo' you-alL- " 

Nope ! Speed ! more speed ! It is the estimate 
of an official in the municipal government that 
Washington " as a general thing is about three 
times as active as it was before the war, and is 
showing instances where business men not en- 
gaged in munitions enterprises or other activities 
directly connected with the war are doing four 
times as much business as formerly." When it 
comes to the telephone, that official is sadly 
meticulous. The capital has become so busy, in 

108 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

fact, that the city-s "Northwest,-' which from 
days untold believed itself to be the w^hole city, 
has been crowded to the point of making the 
astounding discovery that there really is a 
" Northeast,'' not to mention a " Southeast " and 
even a "Southwest" in which white folks actu- 
ally live, expansive stretches long thought to be 
as mythical as Crocker Land. 

And the feminine shopper, who cries "darn 
it " and other ladylike oaths when she finds that 
the telephone service cannot get her in touch 
with a given bargain sale until long after the 
last of the marked-down shirtwaists or more inti- 
mate garments have been sold, often is tempted 
to use real cuss words in these days when she 
sets out to do her shopping at first hand. Early 
in 1918 the department stores were driven to 
calling loudly upon the district government pow- 
ers to help them out of the tangle in which the 
big rush had tied the shopkeepers. And the Dis- 
trict Defense Council responded to the appeal by 
establishing a set of rules w^hich included, among 
other things, orders that there must be only one 
delivery of goods over a given route each day, 
that the special delivery of parcels must cease, 
that merchandise to be returned must be brought 

109 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

back to the shops within three days, that a de- 
posit must be made on all C. O. D. purchases, 
this last rule being designed to put a stop to the 
feminine habit of ordering C. O. D. articles by 
telephone. 

As the telephone service, so in a way is the 
telegrai)h. On the day the wife and I started 
out from New York to try to get to the capital 
I sent a telegram from Manhattan to a Wash- 
ington address in the late forenoon. It was de- 
livered in Washington twenty-two hours and a 
half later, and the address to which it w^as sent 
is only three squares from the main office of the 
company in Washington. When the telegram 
finally caught up with me in Washington I took 
it to a gentleman chewing a pen in an office of 
the telegraph company and bleated loudly in 
protest. ^ 

" I can't understand it," he said w^ith a sigh. 
" Our delivery is now practically normal." 

" Oh, you call twenty-two hours normal, eh ! " 
I cried instantly, and I '11 bet that crushed him 
all right, all right. What? 

When it comes to the gentle art of real-estate 
dealings, never has any class of business men 
been driven to perplexity so great as these same 

110 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

Washington real -estate agents when it comes to 
solving the great question as to whether, in the 
matter of a definition of war, Sherman was right 
or wrong. The real-estaters, once the whole land 
began to try to live in Washington, could have 
abandoned themselves to a perfect orgy of rent- 
ing if it were not for the sad fact that they soon 
found themselves with nothing left to rent. 
They still have some houses to sell, and all the 
owners ask for them is your bank-book as a first 
payment and then whatever gold-tooth crowns, 
gold fillings, and any artificial jaws or knee-caps 
of silver which your family surgeons, dental and 
plain, may have stow^ed away in your anatomy 
from time to time. Then, too, a paternal Gov- 
ernment has, since the war-time overcrowding 
began, invented an unexpected vexation for the 
real-estate brethren: just when the agent has 
rented the last vacant apartment or office build- 
ing and settles down to rake off his commission 
from the rents, along comes the Government with 
a dispossession notice. " Pack up and git, 
folks," commands the Government. " We 've de- 
cided to commandeer this entire building and 
turn it into offices and laboratories to an advis- 
ory committee of the Signal Corps that is cross- 
Ill 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ing parrots with carrier-pigeons so tliat the War 
Department can keep in touch with the War Col- 
lege at all times without depending on the tele- 
phone. It 's a little idea of the War Depart- 
ment's. Come, come, come, pack np ! This way 
out!'' And bingo! the real-estate man, so far 
as that office building or apartment house is con- 
cerned, again is out of a job. 

" Put up more buildings," say you. But the 
builders can't get materials, what with priority 
certificates of the gilt-edged Grade A making it 
compulsory for the railroads running into Wash- 
ington to give first attention to delivering build- 
ing stuffs for the erection of far-spreading shacks 
that the Government sticks up over night to 
house its civil and military increase of family. 
Furthermore, who 's going to try to get building 
materials for new edifices when the cost of the 
material is about forty per cent, higher than 
normal prices? 

When a new hotel of flossy pretension was 
being rushed to completion a stone's throw west 
of the Willard, the owners and contractors were 
on the verge of being bogged in the general 
swamping of business conditions. Happily they 
suddenly remembered the all pervading priority 

112 




'Sir, I kinnot yet you that numbali, being as the line is 
busy" 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

certificates issued by the priority committee of 
the Council of National Defense. Now, here was 
a necessary edifice which ought to be finished as 
soon as possible, if for no other reason than that 
it stands as close to the Treasury as it is possible 
for a visiting munition-contractor to get, so close 
that a contractor fortunate enough to get a room 
and bath in that hotel can doze off with the sweet 
realization that all the nation's money bins are 
almost directly beneath the footboard of his bed. 
And inasmuch as almost everything in the manu- 
facturing line is now listed, has got itself listed, 
in the Class A of priorities, — from eighty to 
eighty -five per cent. ! — the contractors and own- 
ers did n't see why materials for a swagger new 
hotel should n't get in on the preferred list. 
Wherefore they asked for, and obtained, a pri- 
ority certificate w^hich entitled them to the posi- 
tive delivery of two railway cars of steel and 
sundries a day, and work on the new hotel went 
on joyously. At the time I was in Washington 
the priority committee, having got almost every- 
thing into Class A — which left affairs about 
as they were before the class was invented, — 
had begun all over again by thinking up a Class 
AA for priority certificates, which means a right 

113 



THE WAR- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

of way over even the delivery of mail matter. 
As more and more articles get into Class AA 
it will be a simple matter to begin a third time 
and designate a new and exclusive Class AAA, 
and so on and on till the kaiser is licked and 
we 're all back to normal again. 

And sad to say, it was in the matter of issuing 
priority certificates that the only slight instance 
approaching a hint of graft (always excepting, 
of course, the " honest graft " of the profiteer, 
who in all wars and all ages jumps at a chance 
to wring blood-money from the heart of a suffer- 
ing motherland) that came to my attention in 
all Washington was revealed. A man secured 
a priority certificate for a manufacturer whose 
war contracts entitled him to the certificate, the 
patriot who had got the certificate for the manu- 
facturer being one of those noble souls who had 
closed his desk for the nonce back home largely 
with the idea that he was impressing his neigh- 
bors by leaving his own desk in order " to go 
down to Washington to help out the Govern- 
ment." 

" By the way," said the volunteer priority pa- 
triot to the manufacturer who had just received 
a certificate, " have one of my business cards, 

114 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 

merely so you '11 know who I am back home when 
I 'm not doing this work of helping out the Gov- 
ernment." And the manufacturer took the busi- 
ness card ; but a moment later, while passing out 
of the building, he tore it up and angrily threw 
the scraps away. For in plain United States 
this particular priority man, in manner as well 
as act, might just as w^ell have said to the manu- 
facturer : " Here 's my name and business, son ; 
and always remember that when you needed a 
priority certificate, I 'm the little bright eyes that 
got it for you. So when you 're passing my place 
of business back home and need anything in my 
line, you might show your appreciation by giving 
me a call. Get me?'' 

There 's the only instance approaching ghoul- 
ishness which I came across during w^anderings 
among all sorts and classes of the grand army 
of war-workers which has suddenly descended 
upon Washington, and the instance is listed here 
in detail because it is so small. The incident 
gives cause for three rousing cheers for the very 
reason that it was the worst that could be un- 
covered in all that Avonderful host of volunteers, 
despite the temptations offered ; an army of civil- 
ian heroes that includes the best of brain and 

115 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

energy the country has to offer, men who indi- 
vidually and in the aggregate daily are building 
for a " dollar a year " a record of unselfish serv- 
ice and honorable devotion that will loom large 
even among all the glories of this most stupen- 
dous moment of the world. 



116 



CHAPTER V 

THE TOWN WITH THE TROLLEY OFF 

EVEN in days of normality no one would 
have gone so far as to say, at least during 
the evening hour, when all the clerks of all the 
department buildings were headed simultane- 
ously toward the suburban residential regions, 
that an average Washington surface-car had as 
many vacant seats as one will find, say, in Con- 
gress on any hot afternoon that Walter Johnson 
is scheduled to pitch on the home grounds. But 
nowadays! Well, now^adays in the rush hours 
every car is as thoroughly stuffed as a Philadel- 
phia ballot-box on the Sunday before the Tues- 
day before the first Monday in November. It 's 
an open question whether or not even a machine 
election captain in Philadelphia could have 
wedged a handful of phony ballots into the trol- 
ley-car which the wife and I finally boarded, espe- 
cially after w^e had merged ourselves into the 
mass of standees. 

117 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

It made us provincial New York folk home- 
sick for the comparative comforts of one of those 
subway expresses due to stop near the Grand 
Central Station a few minutes before the five- 
fifteen commutation pulls out for New Eochelle 
on Christmas eve. Also our conductor had an 
irritating habit. Every time the car stopped to 
permit still another nation-saver to horn his way 
upon the back platform, the conductor, himself 
wedged hopelessly among a solid bulge of pa- 
triots sardined into the forward end of the car, 
would bellow back in maddening tones to ask us 
whether or not a sufiflcient quantity of the new- 
est arrival's anatomy had been tucked aboard to 
permit the conductor safely to give the starting 
signal again. 

"Howzit? Howzit? Howzit?" Thus the 
conductor. "Howzit back there?'' 

" Awful ! " shrieked the wife at last in hysteric 
soprano. " If you must know. Conductor, it 's 
ab-so-lute-ly fierce ! " 

But the conductor merely went on conducting. 
As we inched along westward through F Street 
he contented himself with steadily demonstrating 
to the whole class that it must have been a silly 
old soul who tried to make an axiom of physics 

118 



THE TOWN WITH THE TROLLEY OFF 

out of the absurd proposition that two bodies of 
matter cannot occupy the same space in the same 
Mount Pleasant trolley-car at the same time. 
Moment by moment the wife informed me, whis- 
pering the while between a right ear and a left- 
side whisker belonging to two total strangers 
jammed between us, that if the crush lasted just 
a second longer she would die. Yea, verily, she 
said, " This town is a City of Magnificent Dis- 
tances—if you don't have to travel the dis- 
tances." She lent variety to these outbursts 
with loud-spoken protests against the incredible 
time it was taking our car to get from the Union 
Station to the general neighborhood of the 
White House. 

" But look, dearie, how long it took Bryan to 
try to get over the same route, and him never 
making it at that," I cried, with a hearty laugh. 
Thus I tried to dispel her gloom Tvith merry quip 
and laughter. And the best I got for my efforts 
was the distinct realization that if she could 
have got her hands out of the human jam which, 
pinned her arms and hands to her sides, she 
would have reached between the strange ear and 
side whisker that separated us and shaken my 
short back hair into my eyes. 

119 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

We managed to get out of the surface-car not 
much more than half a mile beyond our little 
hotel in Fourteenth Street. To debark had 
merely been a matter of beginning a drive on 
our sector of standing room in the car down near 
Twelfth and F Streets. Then by battling our 
way between the strange side whiskers, the un- 
familiar ears, and past and under wholly un- 
known elbows and shoulder-blades, we both 
emerged through a second growth of whiskers at 
some place near Dupont Circle, or just in time to 
catch a passing Auto-To-Hire that landed us 
back near Fourteenth and K Streets for a mere 
dollar. 

One did n't have to move from the lobby of the 
hotel after dinner that night to learn what every 
one connected with the war was or was not, espe- 
cially was not, doing. For a national capital 
that for generations has been the Grand Exalted 
City of Gossip has, once the war- whirl began to 
spin, laboriously set about the work of collecting 
and tabulating the most extensive and Intensive 
knowledge of things that are not true to be found 
at any place in the known world. Even in the 
normal times of a past and peaceful generation 
one could always pick up mighty secrets of state 

120 



THE TOWN WITH THE TROLLEY OFF 

for the mere trouble of stopping to chat with auy 
callow government clerk within range. 

Say, listen I Remember young Elmer Hoosis, 
over in the Agricultural Department, Jim? 
Well, speaking about that same senator you 
just mentioned, this here Elmer Hoosis has 
a desk right next to a feller that was walking 
through Thomas Circle one night late, when what 
does this feller see but that same Senator Baffing- 
phone hisself and a lot of other swell ladies and 
gents trying to climb up on the statue to give 
General Thomas's horse a bottle of champagne 
to drink. The whole bunch, so this feller who 
works next to Elmer Hoosis says, was so lit that 
even the senator's glass eye was bloodshot. And 
along comes a cop and wades into the bunch and 
pulls them off the statue and everything, and 
what does Senator Baffingphone do but up and 
bite the cop in the leg. He ought to be run out 
of the Senate, that guy. And he beats his wife 
something awful, they say. Of course, Jim, none 
of this stuff gets into the papers, because Elmer 
and all the rest of us fellers connected with the 
Gove'ment just keep it to ourselves. 

Thus it was in the old days. But now, with 
the onslaught of the present war hullabaloo, 

121 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

these are the happy days for the City of Gossip. 
One does n't have to move beyond earshot of the 
nearest hotel lounge — the wife and I didn't — 
to learn on the authority of none other than a 
stoutish man who was bulging from the line of 
beauty on a lounge in the lobby that this here 
now Food Administrator, Henry Hoover, or 
whatever his name is, has his own home packed 
with barrels and shelves of food like he was a 
whole farmer's exhibit at a county fair. Yep. 
Right at the crack of the first gun, muh friend, 
what does this Herb Hoover, or whatever his 
name is, do but pack his own cellar with a cuppla 
carloads of wheat, another car of puttatahs, a 
cuppla barrels of kippered herring, and every- 
thing ! This comes straight, friend, from a niece 
of mine that 's been a stenographer in the Food 
Administration ever since it was started. Say, 
from what I hear that guy Hoover 's got his 
libery shelves stacked with more custard pies 
than Charley Chaplin could throw at Fatty Ar- 
buckle in a whole seven-reel fillum. Yes, in- 
deedy. And this Fuel Administrator, Doc Gar- 
field ! Listen, friend. That Garfield guy 's got 
a private stock of coal that fills his whole darn 
cellar, spreads over half his kitchen, and spills 

122 



THE TOWN WITH THE TROLLEY OFF 

out of the bath-tub and every stationary wash- 
tub in his house. Terrible, ain't it, when even 
the White House didn't have enough coal the 
other day to keep the place warm. Yep, I get it 
straight that Doc Garfield's home looks like it 
was a flash-light of the whole anthracite base- 
ment floor of Scranton, Pennsylvania. And 
lemme tell you, friend, about these gents that 
hollered and hollered for prohibition till they 
got every saloon in the town closed. That 
crowd 's got enough of the hard stuff hoarded 
away to float a new Liberty Loan. I 'm told by 
a man who had ought to know that the main 
squeeze in that bunch ain't drew a sober breath 
since Grant first began to hang around Rich- 
mond. 

One would fancy that the City of Gossip, out 
of its rich store of experience, w^ould know that 
these and similar tales quite as silly ai^e — well, 
silly. But not the City of Gossip! It is on 
record that shortly after this newest explosion 
of yarns began to rip through the capital one 
intellectual of saffron hue among Washington's 
city editors assigned a yellow-nosed investigator, 
shortly after the Food Administrator came to 
town, to hang round the tradesman's entrance 

123 



THE WAR-WHIKL IN WASHINGTON 

leading to the Hoover hoiiseliold and peer into 
the garbage-cans as they were carried out the 
back door each day. And the bright young man 
peered so long and unsuccessfully to try to find 
some evidence of wastefulness in Mr. Hoover's 
glistening garbage-cans that the shiny glare of 
the cans finally caused an eye strain, which, let 
us hope, is nothing trivial. 

Almost all of the gossipy yarns floating the 
length and width of the city are merely amusing, 
but sometimes they are dangerous. "Ain't it 
terrible about Joe Tumulty! Yep, they're say- 
ing all over town that they 've just found out 
he's a German spy, and they whisked him off 
to the prison in Leavenworth and they 're going 
to line him up against a blank w^all right away 
and send him over the route ! And do you know 
about the battle-ship Pennsylvania being sunk 
abroad? The news just came straight from a 
man who works in the State, War, and Navy 
building. The loss of life was terrible, and the 
hospital in the New York Navy Yard is all filled 
up now with the wounded, and the navy won't 
let even the mothers of the poor boys into the 
yard to see their dying sous! " 

124 



THE TOWN WITH THE TROLLEY OFF 

Then out from Washington and across the con- 
tinent rips the " news," causing anguish to the 
mother of every sailor-boy now in foreign waters. 
The fact that the credulous, as likely as not, may 
happen upon Mr. Tumulty on his way to lunch- 
eon half an hour after they had convinced them- 
selves that he was about to face a firing-squad 
out in Kansas, does not keep them from believ- 
ing the next wild tale that floats their way. So 
serious were the effects of the Tumulty story and 
the yarn about the " sinking " of the Pennsyl- 
vania that the secretary to the President and the 
secretary of the navy respectively were compelled 
to issue public statements denying each rumor. 
Just about an hour of this strictly confidential 
sort of " news " being hawked the length of the 
hotel lobby on the first evening we had been able 
to spend beneath a Washington hotel roof re- 
sulted in the feeling that too much was plenty. 
Wherefore toward the elevator I led the wife. 
Who knows but that if we had sat round the 
lobby long enough some one would have let slip 
the information that the prexy and faculty of 
the War College were shattering all the ethics 
of amateur college sport by grabbing off every 

125 



THE WAK-WniRL IN WASHINGTON 

National League professional ball-player drafted 
and playing tliem on the War College varsity 
nine under fake names. 

As the elevator took us roomward I evolved 
a plan to get up early the next morning and buy 
a pair of those good-dollar breakfasts now being 
sold in Washington at prices ranging from two 
to two and a half dollars each. Then we would 
stroll toward the Capitol. Doubtless it would 
be of much benefit to a wife, given overmuch to 
carping criticism, to sit for an afternoon in the 
impressive half-light of the house galleries; to 
sit there and gaze down upon and listen to the 
mighty, dignified statesmen on the floor below; 
listen and absorb, until the great throbbing of 
patriotic emotion welling within her should send 
her, panting uncontrollably, out into the twilit 
evening air. And we did breakfast together as 
planned, but perforce we began on our grape 
fruit long, long after we had given our initial 
breakfast order to a waiter who was transcenden- 
tally the haughty personification of permanent 
Washington's acute resentment to labor. One 
could not l)lame him greatly, inasmuch as he had 
four crowded breakfast-tables besides our own 
to look after. But we did begin to feel unkindly 

126 



THE TOWN WITH THE TROLLEY OFF 

toward liim when, after disappearing with our 
list of breakfast dishes, he either enlisted or was 
drafted. Finally we were able to flag a captain 
of w^aiters, also haughty, but not too proud to 
take our order all over again and personally peel 
the boiled eggs. 

But as we hurried out to meet the air the 
clock in the lobby showed that we had spent so 
much time paging our waiter, our breakfast 
had n't been served to us until it was almost time 
for luncheon. All thought of strolling a mile 
or so to the Capitol had to be put aside. Along 
came an Auto-To-Hire, and we saw it first. 

" To Congress, Jesse James," I said simply to 
the taxibandit. And we were off toward the 
House — a House divided against itself, but, so 
I felt as we began to rattle helter-skelter down 
Fourteenth Street, so brimful of patriotism that 
the T\dfe, I knew, was about to experience the first 
great thrill of her thoughtless young life. 



127 



CHAPTER VI 

THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

OSE might have known that the taxibandit 
at the tiller was one of those Philadelphia 
brigands who had just driven his car ^cross-coun- 
try from Broad and Chestnut streets the day be- 
fore in order to be in on the Washington war- 
time pickin's, and therefore had n't the slightest 
notion where Congress convened. He was all 
that, also he was of a nature too sensitive, seem- 
ingly, to ask for directions; and so he lit right 
out and slambanged down the Fourteenth Street 
incline to '^ the avenue," crossed the town's great 
aorta instead of turning east into it, and never 
slowed up until he had zipped eastward for half 
a dozen blocks along B Street, S. W. There he 
stopped in front of a big brick building that 
stretched the length of an ocean-liner of the first 
class. 

Now I, even I, knew that Congress had always 
128 





These are tlie liappy days for the City uf Gossip 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

done its nation-saving in a spreading Capitol of 
marble and mucli sandstone painted white. 
Still, what with all the rest of the fast shiftings 
about and fancy-footed shadow-boxing that now 
make every day in Washington moving-day, per- 
haps the House and the Senate had called a 
couple of moving-vans also, and had staked a 
new claim within the hollows of the big brick 
edifice that Jesse James had taken us to. Then 
came to mind then and there the authentic case 
where one governmental bureau within the previ- 
ous six months had moved all its office forces and 
furniture exactly six times, the directors of that 
and similar bureaus, far-seeing though they were, 
having moved each time into offices four feet 
wider because no one had been decent enough to 
tell them that the war might continue through- 
out the entire week to come, and therefore cause 
a progressive expanding of business up to the 
point of backing up the furniture van once again 
the first of the following month. Who knows 
but that Congress had outgrown the Capitol 
also? 

" So this is where Congress hangs out now, 
eh ? " I remarked to Jesse James as he lined us 
up beside the roadway and relieved me of the con- 

129 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

tents of my wallet. And as we w^andered toward 
the entrance, Jesse nodded an affirmative in a 
shamefaced way before stepping on his fliTver 
pedals and clacking off toward another hold-up. 
Two lettered legends, one on each side of an 
inner entrance, gave us pause. Evidently the 
hands with index-fingers, one pointing east and 
the other west, that decorated each sign, re- 
spectively, indicated which was the Senate wdng 
and which the House. In turn we inspected the 
signs. The first one read : 

SOUTH EAST RANGE 

(Turn to Left) 

Osteological ColJection 

"0-s-t-e-o — " I began. ^' Why, that means 
bone and solid ivory and things like that," I 
cried ; and as I hastened toward the more osten- 
tatious sign, which at first glance I had taken for 
granted showed the way to the Senate, the wife 
laughed right out loud. For only a moment I 
w^as nonplussed by the w^ording on the second 
sign-board : 

130 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 
SOUTH WEST RANGE 

(Turn to Right) 

Americmi Stratigraphic Series 

of Rocks and Fossils 

Also Systematic Series of 

Invertebrate Fossils 

"Holy mackerel!" The truth had dawned 
upon me. "Here I ask that fat-headed chauf- 
feur to take us to the House and Senate, and 
what does he do but dump us off at the National 
Museum's collection of — " 

" Bone, solid rock, spineless fish, concrete and 
solid ivory," crooned the wife, happily. "Do 
you know, dearie, there 's the first chauffeur I 've 
ever seen who approaches genius. I trust you 
tipped him accordingly. Come, let 's hurry into 
the ' South West Range ' first and give the Sen- 
ate the once over." 

Now this was no slangy, flippant way to ap- 
proach the august presence of the nation's Con- 
gress; but I took a firm grip on my temper, my 

131 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

tongue, and my wife's arm, and silently I led 
her eastward through the Mall for a mile, then 
up a hill, and into the House wing of the Capitol. 
'NoiD the wife would see what she would see. I 
would show her, or, to be more modest, I and 
Congress would show her. 

It so happened that we had struck a compara- 
tively dull day in the House, as days go now 
round the Capitol. The final vote on the na- 
tional suffrage amendment to the Constitution 
w^as the only idea on the congressional mind that 
day, but, taking things by and large, it w^as a 
fairish average day for the wife to see. My 
heart began to pump excitedly upon approach- 
ing this great body of representatives who, as I 
explained to the wife as we crowded into one of 
the Capitol elevators, for a salary not so very 
much greater than they might be making back 
home as country lawyers, had listened to the call 
of the people and unselfishly had come to Wash- 
ington not only to labor day and night to save 
the nation, but to submit gracefully also to the 
stern mandate of the Federal law which stipu- 
lates that each congressman must accept sixty 
copies of " The Congressional Record " every 
day! 

132 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

There was little to attract attention when the 
wife and I arrived on a level with the corridor 
entrances to the Family Circle tier of seats in 
the House. Almost nothing was going on except 
that Billy Sunday was opening the session with 
prayer, and House stenographers were breaking 
lead-pencils and finger-nails and fountain-pens 
trying to keep abreast of Billy's prayer, and 
women standees were bulging outward into the 
corridors all the way round the string of Family 
Circle entrances, and back of these was an over- 
flow of still more women clamoring to get in as 
madly as if Doug' Fairbanks and Charley Chap- 
lin were chatting on the floor of the House Avith 
Mary Pickford and Theda Bara, and Speaker 
Champ Clark was flashing for the first time a 
new pearl-gray suit decorated at the lapel with a 
rose of saffron hue in honor of the occasion, and 
outside House attendants had taken all the 
beaded knitting-bags away from the women who 
had arrived early enough in the earliest morning 
to find seats inside, and the knitting-bags had 
been heaped in piles waist-high in the corridors, 
because it 's against the law to carry any bundles 
or packages of bombs into the House during war- 
times, and Sculptor Gutson Borglum, after wan- 

133 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

dering accidentally into the Statuary Hall of the 
Capitol and getting one quick glimpse at the 
Sculptural Chamber of Horrors, was fleeing with 
wild screams of terror through the corridors, and 
even louder than the Borglum yells arose distant 
thunderings of oratorical impressiveness as vari- 
ous representatives hit the high spots of forensic 
fervor, and a gavel w^as banging and banging 
afar off, and somebody was intoning terrifically 
about the " b-r-r-r-road and-ah beeounteous pa- 
rairees, gen-tul-mun, of thee great- tuh and gu- 
lorias State-tuh which I have thee honor to rep- 
reesent-tuh in this-ah dis-ting-wished uh-sem- 
bludge/' and a reporter cub padding along behind 
us hurriedly was balling a metaphor all up by 
asking his companion, " Who 's the old goat bray- 
ing on the floor now, Larry? " and some one was 
banging and hollering, " The Chair reck-ah-nizes 
thee gnlmn from Mizzooree,'' and a large lady 
whose back hair was undecided was shoving along 
on tiptoe and panting, " I ■ m suffickating, Emmy, 
but I -11 go to my grave happy if I can only get 
just a glimpse of Jeanette Rankin," and the 
newspaper telegraph instruments, down the cor- 
ridor tow^ard the Press Gallery, were sending the 
news to the sistern in far-away States amid a 

134 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

chorus of clickings like the seven-year plague of 
crickets, and the gavel was banging again, and 
some one was shouting dramatically in purest 
South Bostonese, *' This democracy cawnnot 
exist hawf free awnd hawf female," and a woman 
fainted in the crush and was laid out across one 
of the piles of knitting-bags, and somebody ar- 
rived with ice- water for the fainting lady just as 
w^e had biffed our way close enough to a door to 
hear a logically intensive bit of debate that ran : 

" Does the genelmn from Cuhnetcut object? '' 

" I ruh-zerve the right to objec'/' 

"But does the genelmn from Cuhnetcut ob- 
ject?'- 

" I ruh-peat, I ruh-zerve the right to objec'." 

" But does the genelmn object or does he not 
object?" 

" I ruh-peat again, I ruh-zerve the right." 

" Will the genelmn answer yes or no, does he 
object?" 

" I ruh-zerve the — " 

" Does the genelmn — " 

" I ruh-zerve — " 

" Does the — " 

" I ruh — " 

" Does — '' 

135 



THE WAE-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

« I — " Et ceterah-rali-rali ! 

I tingled with the glory of it all, even with the 
thrill of these far snatches of statesmanship 
coming from the hearts and the sonls and the 
lungs of famous patriots whom so far I could not 
so much as glimpse. At last I was where the 
war actually was being won! Not a second of 
the great crisis of world crises was being wasted 
by these great statesmen, who persistently and 
steadily w^ere gripping Time himself by his hoary 
old whiskers and swiftly with savage oratory 
were winning the awful fight. Ah, if little 
Freddy Harper and the other lads represented by 
the four stars on the service flag proudly floating 
in a window of our wool-sponging place in lower 
Broadway were only here — thus my thoughts 
ran as the mighty struggle to win the war went 
on and on just beyond the massed mobs of women 
fighting to get into the Family Circle ; if Freddy 
and his bunkies could only step out of the ice- 
water in which they were standing knee-deep in 
the trenches of France, waiting, waiting, could 
but look upon and listen to this splendid and un- 
selfish battle being waged on the floor of the 
House to win the suffrage vote at the next con- 
gressional elections and thereby win the war! 

136 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

To be here in the Capitol, if only for a moment, 
would hearten Freddy Harper and his little band 
of machine-gun lads witli the thought that they 
were ever in the mind of a great people's chosen 
representatives. And, contented, they would go 
back to their trenches, and the memory of this 
wondrous scene as it came to them again during 
the long, cold nights in France would make them 
forget their loneliness and the heart chill and the 
choke of homesickness for a sight again of the 
bronze Liberty girl standing high on her pedestal 
in good old New York Bay, torch held far into the 
blackness, like another mother of the story-books, 
who nightly puts a lamp in the window for her 
boy who has been gone a long, long time, but 
surely will come back to her again. 

Every day those lads abroad, every one of them, 
should receive a copy of " The Congressional 
Record ■' in order that they might kill time, while 
lolling around the trenches doing nothing, by 
poring over its pages. Thus they w^ould have 
implanted in their minds each day a concrete un- 
derstanding of the constancy with which the 
Congress was standing by them, shoulder to 
shoulder, of the unselfish zeal Tv^th which the 
chosen spokesmen of the people in the homeland 

137 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

were figliting with them, inch by inch, always and 
ever, toward victory. I think of this as I glance 
through the jjages of the copy of the '' Record " 
lying beside me as I write, with its half hundred 
pages of closely printed type that preserve for all 
time the burning words and sounding phrases 
that were uttered on the historic day that the 
wife and I leaned against the noise coming out 
toward us. So great was my emotion that day 
that I know I should not now be able to recall 
with precision even the few bits and snatches we 
were able to hear, were it not for the stenographic 
report in the " Record " now before me. 

Beat by beat come the heart-throbs of a nation 
in anguish : 

**Do I understand that the gentleman's request for 
unanimous consent goes to the extent of ordering the 
previous question on the rule, so as to cut out the 
offering of the amendment to the rule V ' ' It does. ' ' 
''Then I object. '^ ''The gentleman from Florida ob- 
jects." "I move the previous question on the reso- 
lution." "If the gentleman from Illinois controls 
the time for the rule and the gentleman from Tennes- 
see controls the time against it, this side of the House 
is without time." "May I ask if the gentleman will 
yield some of his time to this side of the house?" 
"Certainly; I had made promises for more time but 

138 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

I will see that that side gets an equal division of the 
time." "Will the gentleman yield ten minutes to 
this side?" ''Yes." "Mr. Speaker, I understand 
that it is settled now that I have twenty minutes 
under my control. Is that correct?" "I do not un- 
derstand that the proposition was that the gentleman 
from Tennessee should have twenty minutes." "I 
am entitled to that time under the general rule." 
"For what purpose does the gentleman from Virginia 
rise?" "To see what has become of my time." "It 
has gone." "I had three minutes left." "I know 
the gentleman would have three minutes left if it was 
not for the clock.'' "Now, what does the gentleman 
from Virginia want?" "I just wanted my time." 
(Prolonged laughter.) 

So for a long, long time they talked inspiringly 
abont how much time they would have to talk. 
If I could but be down there with them on that 
floor, fighting, fighting, side by side with them 
as they gave their very life's breath to speed up 
the war so that Freddy and all the Freddies early 
could come home again ! Here was efficiency in 
fighting, with no thought of self, surely with no 
thought of infusing the pettiness of party politics 
at so serious a moment in the nation's history; 
no flippancy, but only the pure voice of a great 
people clamoring for the swift victory for their 

139 



THE WAR- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

suffering boys in France. Shameful, I could see 
now, were the stories going about that morning 
to the effect that Democrats and Republicans at 
a time like this intended to devote every precious 
moment of that whole war-time day tiying to 
" put the other side in the hole '^ politically. 
Creatures walked through those Capitol corridors 
who were low enough even to say outright that 
a delegation of party politicians only the day be- 
fore had, in their extremity, influenced a Presi- 
dent of the United States, by running to him and 
pleading with him at the last moment, to shove 
aside his tremendous war burdens so that he too 
might play party politics by coming out with a 
petty partizan plea for suffrage in order to in- 
fluence the voters to vote the Democratic ticket 
in the November election to come. How silly 
were such insinuations, so I thought, against the 
people and their representative leaders, my lead- 
ers, when long ago all the other fighting nations 
of the world — Germany, Austria, England, 
France, Belgium, Italy, all — had set aside party 
politics as childish things that should not, could 
not, intrude themselves at a moment when the 
World War demanded the concentrated thought 

140 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

of all that was best in all politics and statesman- 
ship if a nation were to prevail. 

And so the gossip floating about was just silly ; 
it could n't be possible that our wondrous nation, 
of all the countries on earth, alone could be giv- 
ing thought to petty political advantages, alone 
of all the world could be insane enough to try to 
conduct the war from the point of view of miser- 
able party politics. It was time such stories 
ceased. Why, I had even heard a white-haired 
officer of the American Army, bronzed by a life 
spent in the winds and sun of experience and 
noted far and wide among military scientists as 
one of the most thorough students of his calling 
living to-day, heatedly make the accusation, 
again and again, that " rotten party politics are 
responsible for the thrusting aside of a soldier 
who not only has the finest mind in all our army, 
but pretty close to the best mind we ever had in 
our army." I had laughed, feeling sorry for him 
and his fatuity even as I laughed. 

"But it's true,'' the officer had stormed. 
"Out of a hundred million people he was the 
only American who, within a few weeks after 
Germany spilled into Belgium, did not content 

141 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

himself with saying that the United States pos- 
sibly would get mixed up actively in the war in 
Europe, who didn't even rest with saying that 
probably we would get into it ; he said from the 
first in a quiet, certain way to those who should 
be told — and that includes the whole Washing- 
ton crowd — that we could not possibly keep out 
of the war. They laughed at him. Then, when 
no one else would do anything, he started in to 
do all that an officer in the army dared initiate 
in the way of preparedness. He evolved the 
Plattsburg idea. He knew that Bryan's boast of 
' a million men springing to arms between sun- 
rise and sunset ' was blithering bosh, and that if 
such an army did arise miraculously, it would, 
without officers to direct it, be a worthless mob. 
And no one in all Washington would begin to 
train the officers, so he took a first batch of raw 
material to Plattsburg and taught them the rudi- 
ments of the game. Then as senior general in 
the army he was influential enough to hammer 
the lunkheads, who should have been helping his 
work along, but were n't, into lending some gov- 
ernmental assistance, and he trained more and 
more raw boys into the groundwork of soldier- 
ing. Members of his staff did a lot of the actual 

142 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

work, but he was always personally on the job 
at Plattsburg and at the other camps that arose 
as a result of his Plattsburg idea. 

^' But all the time he was getting in bad by 
indirectly criticizing the department ; not that he 
ever criticized directly, but by preaching and 
practising preparedness when the Government 
was doing nothing he hurt a lot of feelings. If 
it were not for him, we 'd have gone into this war 
even worse off than we were and are. Did the 
politicians show any appreciation? Shucks! 
He happens to be a Republican. He was even 
^ prominently mentioned ' at the Chicago conven- 
tion of 1916 for a few minutes as a Presidential 
possibility. If he ever came back from France 
after having served his country there with the 
ability that his political enemies knew he w^ould 
display, he • d be in danger of being nominated to 
head the Republican national ticket at the sub- 
sequent Presidential election. Probably he 
would be elected. And so when we went to war 
and needed his great services as never before, 
they put the rollers under him.'' 

I had argued it out with the learned army man, 
I remembered as the wife and I stood in the 
Capitol corridor trying to hear the House; had 

143 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTOK 

insisted to the army man tliat he must be mis- 
taken, until he jumped from his chair angrily and 
had left me. But whatever misgivings he may 
have aroused within me that day, they were all 
dispelled, blown away, by the noble vocables aris- 
ing from the floor of the House. Where tlie army 
man had caused me uneasiness by his hard mar- 
shaling of incidents, the patriots of the Congress 
caused me to gulp with patriotic emotion. Word 
for word, thanks to the stenographic report of 
the day's session printed in " The Congressional 
Record " before me, I repeat here the sentences 
and strings of sentences that came out to us as 
the door near which we stood was opened and 
closed, closed and opened. Now would come 
refutation, so I whispered to the wife, of the 
stories of the low gossipers who could accuse even 
the country's ordained representatives of forget- 
ting the war w^hile they squabbled for partizan 
place and power. 

Again the door beyond the mob in front of us 
was pushed open for some moments, held open 
for at least a little while by the press of humans 
against it. We cupped our ears and listened : 

*'Mr. Speaker, for five long months I gave the best 
that was in me physically and mentally, and cheer- 

144 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

fully gave several thousand dollars of my individual 
funds, for Democratic victory in my State. I was 
deeply grateful that Kentucky rolled up her biggest 
majority in thirty years for the Democratic ticket. 
1 — " [Door closed. Opened again.] 

''The chair recognizes — " 

*'It was my privilege yesterday afternoon to be 
one of a committee of twelve to ask the President for 
advice and counsel (laughter) on this important 
measure." (Prolonged laughter.) 

"If this resolution is defeated to-day the country 
will understand whom to hold responsible — one sec- 
tion of the country controlling the Democratic 
Par—" 

''It was known by the committee that went to see 
the President that the Republicans were going to 
take this matter up and pass it in caucus, was it not ? ' ' 

"I want to say this: Without the votes of the 
Democratic Members from California, the Speaker 
would not be in the Chair. And I want to say fur- 
ther to the Members on the Democratic side that the 
returns indicated two hours before we closed our polls 
in the West that the President was defeated — " 

"Mr. Speaker and Members of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, a little more than 400 years ago Colum- 
bus discovered America." 

"What the State of Iowa needs worse than any- 
thing else is a lot of first class political funerals 
among their Members of Congress and State legis- 
lature." (Prolonged laughter.) 

145 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Unsatisfactory as it was to stand there and 
get only drabs of sentences and paragraphs, a 
sentence or phrase or paragraph as the door was 
opened or closed again, the wife and I realized — 
I 'm sure, at least, that I did — from the very 
fervency of the debate that some mighty issue of 
a war-stricken land was at stake. Just what 
they were debating about I could not, of course, 
tell. Sometimes, so I noted between door-swing- 
ings, the question of who had discovered America 
seemed to be at issue, but again they would swing 
four hundred years forward and go into learned 
and lengthy dissertations on the political history 
of Kentucky, Iowa, or any of several States dur- 
ing the latest national campaign. Then there 
was an instant hush in the hubbub coming from 
the women standees massed around us as again 
the door swung open long enough to enable us to 
realize that still another speaker was dwelling 
upon the many excellences of the lady from Mon- 
tana, Miss Rankin. Doubtless the speaker was 
extoling some fine bit of statesmanship which 
Miss Ilankin had contributed to the all-im- 
portant, the only important, work of speeding ui> 
the war. Unfortunately, the door remained open 
only long enough to enable us to hear only one 

146 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

sentence of the orator's appreciation of Miss 
Rankin's efforts to aid her warring America : 

*'The lady from Montana has introduced a joint 
resolution in this House recognizing the right of Ire- 
land to home rule. ' ' 

The door was closed before I could readjust my 
mind from Columbus's discovery to the political 
situation in Iowa and then over to Ireland. 
Then for a long time the sentences came dribbling 
out to us as the door swung back and forth, all of 
us waiting patiently during the rapidly recurring 
intervals of comparative silence for the door to 
open again long enough to permit us to hear a 
paragraph more : 

"I know there are a great many patriotic women 
in the State of Ohio who are able to cast just as in- 
telligent a vote as any Member of this body, but our 
party platform is against it. So until that barrier is 
raised I shall vote against this amendment." 

''It is passing strange, Mr. Speaker, that the Pres- 
ident should so suddenly change his mind on this 
proposition. I will not say that he changed it because 
he foresaw that this (Republican) side of the House 
was going to vote almost unanimously for it and tried 
to beat us to it, but it certainly is a rather funny pro- 
ceeding. Surely, if Woodrow Wilson can change his 
mind over night and get by with it — " 

147 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

*^Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that the President 
should be so severely arraigned and criticised as he 
has been to-day for having yesterday afternoon by 
means of his self -arranged newspaper publicity, got- 
ten aboard the bandwagon of national woman suf- 
frage, which, so evident to him at that time, was 
being carried on to certain victory by an overwhelm- 
ing majority of Republican votes. He should not be 
censured because he may have a new idea once in a 
while/* 

''Mr. Speaker, I have heard it said that the Re- 
publicans are going to vote for this (suffrage) reso- 
lution almost solidly, and that it would be good poli- 
tics for the Democrats to line up solidly for it also, 
else the Republicans would get credit for its passage, 
and the Democrats would be swept from power in 
the next elec — " 

Enthralled though I was in the magnificent 
war-time evidences of history in the making that 
^vere coming to my ears, I could not help but no- 
tice that the wife, who had become somewhat 
separated from me in the milling around of the 
crowd, was desperately trying to press her way 
out of the mob. She seemed displeased, to put it 
mildly, with something or other; what it was I 
had no means, of course, of knowing. It was just 
as the words, " It would be good politics for the 

148 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

Democrats to line up solidly for it also," were 
being intoned impressively from within that the 
wife began to elbow her way toward the rear of 
the crowd violently. Maybe the man standing 
back of her had been drinking or the stout lady 
beside her may have been shoving too hard. 
Well, so far as I could see, the wife had suffered 
no serious injury, and her face had suddenly 
flushed to a shade so closely resembling a three- 
alarm fire that I knew she had n't become faint 
in the crowd. If she wanted to go back to our 
hotel, well and good; she knew the w;ay. I had 
come too all-fired far from home to hear these 
foremost statesmen of the land to pull out of the 
crowd now just because the wife had taken of- 
fense at some imaginary trouble or other. The 
unreasoning, pettish, emotional way the mind 
of woman does work at times sure does keep me 
winging. 

She was gone, and I had forgotten her the in- 
stant the sentences, or bunches of sentences, be- 
gan to filter out into the corridor again : 

*'Mr. Speaker, I was amused at my friend from 
Oklahoma, Mr. Ferris, who wants us to stand by the 
President. God knows I want to stand with him. I 

149 



THE WAE-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

am a Democrat, and I want to follow the leader of my 
party, and I am a pretty good lightning-change artist 
myself sometimes (prolonged laughter) ; but God 
knows I cannot keep up with this performance. ' ' 
(Prolonged laughter.) 

''If the wife should disagree with the husband and 
have her vote counted in opposition to his, then we 
would find the husband and wife constantly engaged 
in political disputation, which would grow more 
heated and more acrimonious as a campaign advanced, 
until finally a veritable conflagration of domestic in- 
felicity would be kindled, consuming the marital tie, 
destroying the home, and sending the children or- 
phans out on the cold charity of the world to become 
charges on the State. This picture is not over- 
drawn. ' ' 

"God knows that factional politics is bad enough 
even when — " 

''Every man on this floor came into this world at 
the peril of his mother's life." 

"If the gentleman thinks that and acts accordingly 
he will go to jail some of these days." (Prolonged 
laughter.) 

"Every novel in our youth told us of some young 
fellow who told his girl that she should never soil 
her lily-white hands with work; but the last chapter 
showed her taking in washing to support an orphan 
asylum for a drunkard's home, the children of a man 
sleeping somewhere in a drunkard's grave." 

"Mr. Speaker, Zobier Pasha, still living, I think, 
150 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

in the Sudan, was the greatest slave king Africa ever 



saw. 



Although the statesmen had been talking stead- 
ily for more than two hours, — they had assem- 
bled an hour earlier than usual that day because 
of the unusual need for rapid, incisive action in 
this and countless other critical matters at hand, 
— I was still unable to piece out their different 
arguments sufficiently to enable me to figure out 
just what great w^ar measure was engaging their 
attention. Never was the thought so distress- 
ingly borne in upon me that I was but a humble 
wool-man w^ho had no part in the same intellect- 
ual w^orld in which these leaders of the people 
thought and moved. No son of mine, if a son 
ever be borne to bless us, would go through life 
without a college education as I had been com- 
pelled to do, that I resolved then and there as 
the feeling crushed me that I had n't even the 
mind training to enable me to sense even vaguely 
what my mental superiors on the floor below were 
laboring so mightily about. 

Most wonderful of all to me, little as I under- 
stood it all, w^as the untiring energy of these 
patriots in our great w^ar crisis. They spoke on 

151 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

and on and on as if it were a pleasure for tliem 
to do so, whereas, even I could vaguely see that 
they were voluntarily taking upon their unselfish 
shoulders a labor of patriotic love that would 
have crushed us lesser men. And in their 
anxiety to finish up this thing, whatever it was, 
in the briefest possible time, so that instantly 
they could grapple with the next stupendous war 
problem awaiting them, they shot forth their 
thoughts with machine gun rapidity, so that not 
a golden moment be wasted. 

Back and forth swung the door, and came to 
me the splendid periods, remarkable for original- 
ity of thought, content, and expression, that 
showed no war-time instant was being wasted : 

''The gentleman from Alabama reminds me of the 
man at the banquet in New York City. He and his 
friends had — " (Door was closed before the speaker 
had got far into his funny story. Door was opened 
as great burst of laughter followed the completion of 
the story.) 

"Something has been said about the control of this 
House passing from the Democratic Party and the 
South; we are more concerned in the South in con- 
trolling our own affairs than we are in controlling 
the small amount of patronage of the gang of poli- 

152 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

ticians that are coming to Congress merely for the 
loaves and fishes." 

"The Chair recognizes — " 

"My mother, with my dear father, who has passed 
away, crossed the prairie. It was my mother who, 
when the hot winds blew and the grasshoppers came, 
said, 'No, Jim, we will not go back to Ohio.' My 
mother," &c. [Door remained open long enough to 
enable us to hear early history of the orator, his fa- 
ther and mother, but space limits forbid a reprint of 
the engrossing history here.] 

"No man, no woman, ever lowered a standard by 
performing a duty." 

"In the next Presidential campaign no Republican 
can be elected without the vote of the States where 
women are enfranchised. No Democrat can be de- 
feated if he can secure these votes. Fortunately for 
us the Republicans wobbled on this issue in the last 
campaign. They will not repeat the blunder, and if 
the Democratic Party is to continue to rule this coun- 
try it must display a willingness to meet this issue." 

"Mr. Speaker, the world moves." 

"Mr. Speaker, the life of Lucy Stone was as in- 
spired as that of Joan of Arc. Born in the little 
farming town of West Brookfield, she," &c. [His- 
tory of Lucy Stone BlackwelPs childhood, girlhood, 
and womanhood. Again space limits, unfortunately, 
do not permit reprint of the interesting details. 
Those interested see ''The Congressional Record," 
Vol. 56, No. 20, and read on and on.] 

153 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

*'Mr. Speaker, the people are made up of men and 
women/* 

"Why cannot women vote? Simply because they 
are the one great part of the population to whom the 
franchise has not been granted." 

' ' ]\Ir. Speaker, a change in the fundamental law of 
the United States is a serious question." 

Then for a longer interval than usual the door 
remained closed. Just a faint blurring of the 
shouts within came to us, now and again punc- 
tuated with personal banterings back and forth 
as the patriots relaxed for a moment from the 
great strain and indulged in merry quip and 
lengthy laughter. 

The long time 1 had been standing there in the 
crush, the heated air, something, began to make 
me feel depressed. As always these days when 
depression sits upon me, my thoughts began to 
dwell u])on the war, our w^ar. Also my war 
thoughts always persist in centering upon our 
Freddy Harper, who years before had come 
to our oflSce as errand boy, bright-eyed and 
snappy as a young fox-terrier, and had steadily 
worked his way into our hearts, and up and up 
in our business firm. Then the war had come, 

154 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

and Freddy, who loved life more tlian any young- 
ster I had ever seen, grew moody for days. One 
morning he had come into my office and had had 
a long talk with me, and then he had shaken 
hands all around and had walked out of our busi- 
ness place. And a few days later we had put a 
service flag in our window, not in silly boast- 
fulness, but because it was the least we could do 
in honor of Freddy Harper, whom we loved very 
much. One by one we had added to the lone 
star on our first flag until there were four stars in 
all on the little silk banner that one of our office 
windows framed. In turn the four lads had left 
us, each of them dropping in for a few moments 
later on to say good-by, bravely garbed in their 
new khaki, and their eyes alight with the wonder 
of the great adventure. The names of two of 
them, humble wool-spongers, I could not even re- 
call. The name of the third, a red-haired Irish 
lad, red-haired, white-souled and blue-eyed, I 
might have forgotten forever, too, if it were not 
that his old mother had come to our office one day 
to tell us how he had walked up to death, a gen- 
tleman unafraid. 

He was lying in a hospital in Lyons now, his 
155 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

chin and mucli of bis lower jaw shot away — 
Eddie Murphy was his name, by the way — and 
he never Avoiild be able to talk again ; he " never 
would be any good again/' as Eddie's sister, who 
had accompanied her mother from their home in 
Harlem to our office, had put it. 

" If Eddie was only here," his mother had said, 
^'instead of suffering all alone among straugers 
so far away, in this place I never before heard tell 
of, — Lyons, isn't it they call it, Susan? — if I 
only had the boy with me, it would n't be so hard. 
But to lie in my bed at night thinking and think- 
ing as I do that it is only strangers that are car- 
ing for Eddie is tearing my heart till — till — 
I know I promised you, Susan, that if you took 
me here I 'd not bother these gentlemen by cry- 
ing, but, God help me! I — I can't help myself." 
And she had turned toward the wall and buried 
her face in the cheap little muff she carried. 

We had comforted her as best we could, and 
when she had become calmer again we had told 
her that immediately we would find a place for 
Susan in our office or work-rooms and pay her 
Eddie's wages besides. But she had sat there 
unheeding, twisting her muff in her hands. And 
it was only when we had begun to tell her that her 

156 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

Eddie was not among strangers that her interest 
had come again. All the hearts and the thoughts 
and the dynamic energies of a greatest land, we 
had assured her, solely were being concentrated 
with helpful aid upon her Eddie, and upon all 
the Eddies who formed that splendid flower of 
young American manhood hurrying eastward to 
Eddie's aid. Why look upon him as deserted, 
neglected? we had asked her encouragingly, when 
all Eddie's countrymen, each so far as lay in his 
power, had thrust aside personal ambition, pri- 
vate gain, every selfish interest, that they might 
labor, day and night, as one great united people, 
led by brilliant statesmen, whose minds had 
grown serious and sobered in a day as they 
jumped forward to lead to swift victory. 

The door just ahead of me that led to an aisle 
in the House gallery suddenly was shoved open 
again and from within came a great gale of 
raucous laughter. And then as the merriment 
died down a bit the voice of still another orator 
came out to the mob in the entrance : 

**Mr. Speaker, a certain Southern bachelor poet, 
in a spirit of poetic fervor, exclaimed: 
'Woman, woman, thou art divine! 
Oh, that I had one I might call mine, 
157 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

To soothe me in my worstest woes, 
And cook my dinner and wash my clothes. ' ' ' 
(Tremendous applause and laughter.) 

" God Almighty ! " I swung round as my wife 
gripped my arm with a hand that trembled, her 
voice, low and tense, coming to me in this sem- 
blance of a prayer; for it was a prayer, though 
spoken through clenched teeth. Somehow^ she 
had worked out of the crowd for a time, but later, 
fascinated, had pushed a way close to me again. 

^' God in heaven ! " she cried again, once we 
were free of the mob, " we 're at war ! Don't they 
know it? At war! Mountebanks I High -school 
commencement ^ oratory ' ! Silly jokes ! Vil- 
lage politics! Roaring like fools over doggerel 
that rises to the heights of rhyming woes and 
clothes! I don't demand long-faced solemnity, 
— even at a funeral, for that matter, — but I do 
demand at least dignified efficiency, decency, un- 
selfishness, unity, anything and everything 
that '11 help in a terrible crisis like this. A hide- 
ous monster gripping the very throat of the coun- 
try, ray country, shattering forever the lives of 
that boy from your office and thousands like him, 
ripping his chin off and tearing the heart out of 

158 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

his mother, all their mothers! And this gang 
here wastes hours and days on asinine antics! 
For almost three hours I 've listened to them now, 
each side trying to block the w^ay of the other in 
the scramble for votes next November. In all 
this sickening day not a jackanapes on that floor, 
not ofie, has given the slightest indication that 
he was devoting a single thought to whether suf- 
frage was or was not a great national good. My 
own America, everything that's decent in this 
whole w^orld, calling for help, and still they snarl 
and squeal and squeak for votes, their own re- 
elections, party power, dow^n there in that hole 
like a — a — like a pitf ul of vile rats ! " 

And then I got mad, mad clean through, just as 
mad as the w^ife was. I w^ould n't stand for talk 
like that, not from my wife or any one else. For 
more than fifteen years we had struggled along 
without exchanging billingsgate or bitterness; 
but now, first and last, I opened up on the wife, 
right there beyond earshot of the crowd, balled 
her out and laced into her until the whole House 
had nothing on me for oratorical firew^orks. 
Should these men be singled out for vile abuse, 
I demanded, w^hen every one else in the land, from 
the highest leaders in the executive and legis- 

159 



THE WAR-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

lative branches of our Government down to the 
lowest-browed, bull-necked captain of a gas-house 
election precinct, had agreed that the written and 
spoken idea is the first weapon of modern war? 
Who w^as she, I thundered, to holler out abusively 
her own private ideas when it had been decided by 
the greatest leaders, as soon as these unspeakable 
Huns had reached toward us with hands red with 
the gore of girls and babes, that the thing to do 
was to talk some sense and a feeling of shame into 
the monsters ; raise an army, yes, but not neces- 
sarily so big and costly an army that its sheer 
size and strength and equipment would throw the 
fear of God into the savages. So great an army, 
and its accompanying promise that we were pre- 
paring for ten years, fifteen years if necessary, of 
fighting, might go far toward splitting the allies 
of the Hun away from him, might even cause 
wdthin the Hun himself a revolutionary stomach- 
ache so sickening to him that he would have to 
lie down and piteously call out, ^^ Eameradef 
But think of the cost of going so whole heartedly 
into the battle — the cost in dollars ! And think 
of the time such an army would take up in the 
raising and training and equipping of it, hours 
so long that little or no time would be left for the 

160 




Tho wliole hoiisi' liad iH»tliiii<,f on mv for oratorit-al fireworks 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

pleasanter and less costly practice of sending out 
an army just large enough to make a decent show- 
ing and then devoting the rest of our days to win- 
ning the war vocally. To let the savage know at 
the outset that we were going into the war at the 
fullest tilt might, quite truly, as I pointed out 
to the wife, end the whole hideous business 
months or years earlier; but I also reminded her 
that wiser intellects than hers had throughout a 
long stretch of war months agreed that " some- 
thing might turn up '' which would end the mess 
and so make unnecessary the tremendous cost in 
time and money that would have to be used up 
immediately if we were to prepare to charge into 
the melee full tilt. Yes, the thing to do in the 
meantime was to try by messages and oratory to 
bring about the happy state of affairs where some- 
thing would " turn up " to help us — to write and 
talk, talk and write, until the last talon had been 
talked off the twin black eagles that perch on 
the spiked helmet of the Sultan of Hell. 

"Yes, singe the black wings with hot air!'' 
agreed the wife; but she said it in a way that 
made me suspicious. 

We had come out upon the topmost of the ter- 
races of withered turf that climb to meet the 

161 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

white marble base of the Capitol, and the sharp, 
fresh air was good to breathe again. All the 
capital, our capital, stretched away in seeming 
peacefulness, flat beneath the haze of a winter 
afternoon that made the far Virginia hills vague 
with mist. Up through the haze leaped to the 
clouds the great granite shaft, simple in outline, 
as all things in life and art and love and death 
are simple — simple as the immortal Virginian 
whose life the granite commemorated. On an 
eye level, high in the Virginia hillside and haze, 
nestled the one-time home of the great gray cap- 
tain who, though he fought on the erring side, 
was the greatest soldier of his time. Between 
the shaft and the far colonial home shimmered 
the marble impressiveness of the new memorial 
to Lincoln, whose very name suggests anything 
but marble impressiveness ; doubtless if the choice 
were given him he would exchange — '^ swap," 
he probably would call the transaction — with 
General Washington the impressive marble for 
the general's simple white shaft. And spreading 
near and far was the city that seemed to our eyes 
lazy and sleepy, but really was all agog with a 
new tumultuousness. As evidence of the new 
tumult arose lengthy stretches of flimsy build- 

162 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

ings, " shacks/- that alined themselves amid the 
leafless trees back of aud beyond the White 
House, mushroom shelters that in a night had 
been reared to house great scientists, financiers, 
creators from all the walks of science and com- 
merce, who at the first call, without waiting for 
the call, had jumped forward, like Eddie Murphy, 
to give the best that was in them for the common 
good. Home life, great business dreams and 
practices, everything, they had brushed aside so 
that they might devote all their alert mentality 
to a country in dire need of unselfish seiTice: 
surgeons of world fame, merging their greatness 
in simple fashion with the splendid legions of 
khaki-clad lads who had come forth from every 
office building, shop, factory, farm-house ; writers 
who had flung aside their half -finished tales, per- 
haps forever, painters who had dropped their 
brushes; venerable admirals, colonels, their 
sparse hair long since grown white in a service 
that well merited the peaceful retirement which 
had been theirs when the call came, who had put 
grandchildren from their knees and kicked aside 
the carpet slippers, and once more had donned 
a uniform that they had thought had been folded 
away forever — all now a part of a grand army 

163 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

that was putting to the test, once and for all, the 
old new ideals of a young political federation of 
colonies, the greatest on earth, which now the 
first time was welding itself into a nation. 

We talked of these things, the wife and I, as we 
walked slowly down the terraces. Some of her 
anger had gone. She even listened quietly 
enough when I tried to make her see that the 
House whose practices of the day she had re- 
sented was not made up quite of mountebanks. 
I told her of a white-haired Jew, middle aged, but 
with the manner and appearance of an ancient 
patriarch of his race, who in that House repre- 
sented not only his constituents in California, but 
all that the ideals of our country represented; 
who, when we could bear the iusults no longer, 
had been chosen to present the war declaration 
which said again that government of the people 
and by the people and for the people shall not 
perish from this earth. And I told her about the 
young congressman from Massachusetts who, 
years before the Hun broke loose, had suffered 
ridicule while preaching in the same House we 
had just left the doctrine of preparedness, 
preached it alone and lonely ; who in his sincerity 
had donned the khaki also the instant the call had 

164 



THE EAGLE CHIRPS 

come, and had scarcely reached his training-camp 
when he died of illness ; had ended his career in a 
blaze of glory quite as radiant as if he had stum- 
bled among meshes of barbed wire with a bullet 
through his brave heart. 

" Any one, every one," I said gently to the wife 
— our talk had made us friends again — " has a 
bit of brain blurring, has to grope about mentally, 
during the first half-awake hours in the early 
morning. Every one, you yourself," I w^ent on as 
we stood near the Peace Monument at the foot 
of the hill, waiting for our car, " needs the shock 
of cold water on the face in the morning to rouse 
the old bean into clear thought and action. And 
listen, old girl : w^e may not be aroused yet, we 
certainly are not as wide-awake as we should be ; 
but when the big shock comes, and jolts us into 
wide wakefulness — " 

But our car had come. 



166 



CHAPTER VII 

SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

*'Then I can write a washing-bill in Babylonic 

cuneiform, 
And tell you every detail of Caractacus^s uniform. 
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, 
I am the very model of a modern major-gineral!" 

ALTHOUGH the number of brand-new young 
army and navy officers paving the streets 
and lobbies and peacock alleys of the hotels in 
the capital in these days is almost as large as 
Mr. Ingersoirs collection of dollar watches, 
Washington is the last place in America to go to 
get the best, the only correct, idea and appreci- 
ation of our new^ army. Despite the fact that 
Mr. Heinz and Mr. Ingersoll have fewer pickles 
and watches combined than the capital has sol- 
diers and sailors in uniform, if one w^ere to con- 
tent oneself with an idea of the army gained 
merely by studying the display it offers at the 

166 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

capital, one would be in danger of arriving at 
wholly false, unfair conclusions. 

When a great nation explosively takes up arms, 
somebody, of course, has to hang round offices 
and do desk work, while the mightier horde of 
somebodies rushes to the glorious Field of the 
Cloth of Khaki. And there, in the tented cities 
of the training camps, not in Washington, is the 
place to see, really to see, the new army, out un- 
der the open sky, in the sunshine or in the rain 
or in the wind or in the cold and the blackness 
of night. There, in the open field, are congre- 
gated the lads who do not merely want to " do 
something for the country," who do not enter 
into the great adventure with misty notions of 
what that " something '' is. Theirs' is the scheme 
of life as simple as the call of the whip-poor-will : 
they want to don a suit of soldier clothes and 
train long enough, just long enough, to learn 
which part of a rifle is the trigger, and then 
race up the inclined gang-plank leading to the 
gray sides of an outgoing transport, calling back 
happily as they race along : " G'-by, folks I 
Look me up in Berlin ! " These are the lads of 
the new army who are training on sun-soaked, 
rain-soaked, sun-hardened, ice-hardened drill- 

167 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

fields in the East and the West. They are not 
" pacifists at heart," as some of the executives, 
regardless of militant and grandiose messages 
and speeches, far above them are. They are one 
with Frank Swett Black, now dead, who, because 
he was a master of the concrete, could say what 
they can only think: 

The fate of nations is still decided by their wars. 
You may talk of orderly tribunals and learned 
referees; you may sing in your schools the gentle 
praises of the quiet life; you may strike from your 
books the last note of every martial anthem, and yet 
out in the smoke and thunder will always be the 
tramp of horses and the silent, rigid, upturned face. 
Men may prophesy and women pray, but peace will 
come here to abide forever on this earth only when the 
dreams of childhood are the accepted charts to guide 
the destinies of men. 

They, the boys in the open, not the lads in 
Washington, are the real new army. I knew one 
of them, and he is a type. He was a young re- 
porter, within the draft age, when the war be- 
gan. Some one in Washington knew of his abil- 
ity. Washington did him the honor of sending 
for him. He told me when he came back what 
had happened there. 

168 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

" Nothing doing/' he said. " They wanted me 
to do some kind of press-agent publicity to take 
the curse off the knocks in the newspapers about 
the mosquitos in Yaphank, Long Island, and the 
raps against the other sites selected for canton- 
ments. They said they 'd give me sixty dollars 
a week — pretty soft, what? — to write the stuff 
they want to get before the public, and they said 
they 'd see that I got a commission in a short 
time. But I told them nothing doing." 

"Why not?'' I asked. 

" Well," he said bashfully, fixing his glance on 
his shoes, " I 'd only be a sort of clerk there. I 
don't think a husky guy like me has any busi- 
ness sitting around a desk in Washington, or 
just handing out tracts and warning the boys 
about cigarettes in a Y. M. C. A. hut in France, 
or ducking the real stuff the way a lot of these 
rah-rah boys are doing. I ain't looking for trou- 
ble, but if I 've got to get it, I don't want it to be 
from a type-writer falling on my foot or poison- 
ing myself to death by sucking an indelible-pen- 
cil. This is a good job they 're offering me, and 
it 's darn nice of them ; but if I took it, I 
would n't feel comfortable, and I know the folks, 
my father and mother, would n't like it. They 'd 

169 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

just keep fretting, like I would, over taking a 
job that was just keeping me out of the draft. 
Get me? I would n't feel comfortable." 

So he enlisted as a private. I saw him only 
once after that. It was round Thanksgiving day, 
I remember. They had let him come home from 
the training camp because daily drills on soggy 
fields down on Long Island had been a bit too 
much for him; six years spent largely pounding 
a type-writer in a hot office had not fitted him 
for sudden entry upon a life in the cold outdoors, 
and temporarily he had lost his voice. But a few 
days of vacation set him right again, and then 
he went back to Long Island to resume his drills 
again. And the last I heard about him was just 
an item that he was over in France, taking things 
easy, prone in a field, and comfortable at last, 
" with a big blue mark on his forehead and the 
back blown out of his head.'' 

He was one of the new army. Doubtless there 
are many like him among the soldier lads who 
throng the capital now, but, unfortunately, one 
constantly is falling over the kind of " officer ■' 
who wants " to do something " up to, but not 
quite including, a trip to a front-line trench, 
where one stands waiting through the black niglit 

170 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

for the whispered order to go over the top with 
the best of luck, and the devil take the foremost. 
Threatening them had been that pesky draft ; and 
if one is of draft age, one stands a chance, which 
comes uncomfortably close to a certainty, that 
one will have to go through that very experience 
in a black trench some night. 

" Not for 7ne! '' secretly says the youngster of 
canniness. " Gee ! I 'm only twenty-seven and 
perfectly healthy, so the draft is going to get me. 
It 's me to see if father or Uncle Jim or some- 
body doesn't know some one in Washington. 
Maybe I can get a job down there that won't be 
so bad. Anyway, truck-drivers and chaps like 
that can carry a gun and do the dirty work better 
than I can ; but there are a lot of other things to 
be done at Washington which a man like myself 
can do, and a truck-driver can't." (Which is an 
argument containing elements of logic. ) Where- 
upon father or uncle or a business associate or 
close friend grasps an end of a wire and begins 
to pull it. Then, when the wires have been 
pulled hard enough, the youngster one day flashes 
forth in his brand-new khaki brooksbrothers or 
searsroebucks, now a proud clerk dressed in the 
uniform of a lieutenant, captain, or, if over 

171 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

thirty, even a major. Thereafter in manner, if 
not in actual words, he sighs to an admiring 
world, " Yep, I just chucked every thiug and came 
down here to do my bit/' 

Not that all the specimens of the new young 
army which one stumbles upon steadily in Wash- 
ington are just like that lad. Not by a great 
deal. Momentarily one meets up with youug 
novelists, brokers, brilliant newspaper and nmga- 
zine writers, lawyers, actors, advertising experts, 
all now in uniform, who are beyond the draft 
age, but still young enough and game enough to 
give up salaries, business incomes; they have 
sublet the flat or the little new house with its 
trimmings of wooden lace in the suburbs — 
" First and Second Mortgage Hall," as one of 
them called his home — and come to an army or 
navy desk in Washington at half, a third, or a 
fifth of their regular incomes. One of them had 
long been receiving a salary of two thousand dol- 
lars a week (real money, not stage) as a movie 
hero, but gave it up to serve as a captain at about 
one fortieth of his accustomed wage. And they 
tackle their new jobs with the zeal of a convert 
tackling his newest religion, with an emotional 
energy that brings smiles, sometimes cynical 

172 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

«mile.s, to the bronzed faces of West Point and 
Annapolis alinrini, to whom this war business is 
— well, just a regular business. And it is good 
that the emotional pep is in them : Xewman, 
Ignatius, St. Augustine, Orestes Brown son, Rose 
Hawthorne Latljroji, all tackled a new job suc- 
cessfully Ijecause they went at it with a fervor of 
which only a convert who has set aside physical 
and mental comforts seems capable. 

Mingling with these are tlje " regulars," to 
whom the new excitement is merely a speeding 
up in a trade that calls for no outburst of emo- 
tion. ]S^o American city hives harder workers 
than this aggregate of regular soldiers and vol- 
unteers; but the whole military impression in 
Washington is not edification unalloyed, for the 
reason that the lad with a imU almost always 
lands a Washington billet and is constantly bob- 
bing up before the visitor. Into the hotel rooms 
of busy men of influence, into their offices, their 
homes, stream the youngsters of draft age, all 
presenting their " letters," all ^^ anxious to do 
something," so long as it will keep them in an 
office that is tightly enough closed to prevent a 
severe draft on the back of the neck. The hor- 
rors of war to them are centered in their inability 

173 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

to get a room with bath at the Shoreham or 
Willard while bothering everybody for a Wash- 
ington job that includes a commission. And the 
quality of their brains and hearts retrogrades in 
direct ratio to the length of the war. For as the 
country saw our end of the Big Mix-up stretch 
through a summer and autumn and winter and 
on into earliest spring, the capital began to rain 
bearers of letters of introduction who had held 
out until the last, not having tlie gumption in 
the earliest days to exchange home i3leasures for 
even the discomforts of Washington, but all 
waiting until a draft number was beginning to 
reach right out and bite 'em. Among them were 
countless youths who, fearing the shoulder blis- 
ters that might come from carrying a rifle, had 
tried at least to get a commission in an officers' 
training camp, but had been rejected because they 
lacked the hearts and the brains and the guts that 
an officer should have. Back they went to their 
home towns then, and to inquisitive neighbors 
they described their brain and soul ailments as 
" eye strain," " slight physical defect," or, to 
quote the commonest term for head and heart 
hollowness, " flat feet " ; whereas the chief trou- 
ble was that the army men who had probed into 

174 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

their general mental make-up had early discov- 
ered in the training camps that any one of them 
could comfortably wear a demi-tasse for a high 
hat. And do^vn they came to Washington next, 
knowing that their draft number was still snap- 
ping at their heels, and began to look round for 
an office desk with a Southern exposure and a 
suit of working-clothes that included at least one 
bar at the shoulder, leather puttees, and a pair 
of third-act spurs warranted to play the very 
dickens with the rugs on the Willard's Peacock 
Alley or to gouge all the varnish off the Govern- 
ment's desk-chairs. 

" This whole dam' town," drawled an admiral 
of the navy, famous for his own efficiency and his 
biting wit, as he talked one day, months after 
we had entered the war, of the kind of Washing- 
ton " officer " w^hose uniform is common in the 
hotel peacock alleys — "this w^hole dam' place 
is a town choking to death with ^efficiency.' 
Washington, if you want a brief description, is 
a city composed of efficiency and flat feet. 
They 're down here to ' do their bit,' too, every 
one of these slickers. They 're dowm here to get 
their bite, that's what. ^ Flat feet,' ^dropped 
from officers' training camp because of slight 

175 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ph^^sical deficiency.' ' Slight physical deficiency,' 
me eye I Listen, son : that slight physical defi- 
ciency almost always is in the head, or they'd 
have got their commissions in the line. Did you 
ever hear of a boy flunked out of Annapolis class- 
rooms who did n't have * bad eyes ' by the time he 
stepped off the train at home? Neither did I. 
These kids down here have brains enough to 
match pennies, haven't they? Well, matching 
pennies and being a Vice-President of the United 
States and shouldering a rifle have one thing in 
common : none of them requires the slightest in- 
telligence. And if they have n't brains enough 
to handle men in battle, they ought to shoulder a 
rifle ; that or shut up about ^ doing their bit ' up 
and down the hotel lobbies of this town. It 
does n't take an intellectual giant to grasp the 
thought in an officer's mind when he yells, 
< For-r-r-d march ! ' or, ^ Over the top, and the best 
of luck, and give 'em hell I ' 

'' But they 're mama's boys, and their mamas 
and papas are as much, or more, to blame than 
they are. Instead of giving the young cub a good 
whaling, papa moves heaven and Washington to 
get his own son a soft job here, and then runs 
out on the front stoop to give three rousing 

176 




'Oil, in one of our Indian wars out West," finally he admitted 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

cheers when a regiment of somebody else's sons 
marches by. And mama buys a sweet little serv- 
ice-flag to stick in the parlor window while weep- 
ing to the card club about ^ poor Ethelbert, off 
to the wars.' That service-flag is a memorial to 
the fact that Ethelbert 's landed a good job here 
which pays him about thirty iron men a week 
more than he could earn in any place one door 
beyond the old man's office. 

" Some of these boys w^ho 've got commissions 
here are doing splendid work — in the Intelli- 
gence Department, or insjjectiug motor-engines 
that they learned a lot about while running their 
own cars or while puttering round papa's auto- 
mobile factory ; or they 've been on magazines or 
newspapers or been turning out best sellers, and 
so can do a lot of stuff here that a trained writer 
can do a darn sight better than a regular army 
or navy man can. But there 's a gosh-awf ul 
bunch around this town who are just clerks and 
ought to be considered as such. Even they are 
needed here, but for heaven's sake let 'em get out 
of the idea that they are making sacrifices, ^ doing 
their bit,' and all that monkey business. Give 
'em the jobs that '11 exempt them from the draft 
if they have n't the nerve to go into the line as 

177 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

privates — and they have n't. But it gets my 
dander up every time I see one of these clerks, all 
decked out in uniforms and spurs and things, like 
Astor's sorrel mare, and then see a big, two-fisted, 
red-blooded private named Hymendinger or 
Sweeney, who 's in this thing to see it through or 
get his gizzard blown through his backbone while 
trying, breeze along and have to bring his hand 
up in respectful salute to a clerk who has n't got 
moral fiber enough to make a pair of laces for 
Private Hymendinger's bow-legged canvas leg- 
gings." 

He 's awful rough, this admiral is. Sometimes 
he talks som'thin' terrible. I happened to catch 
him when he was in a fairish humor, but when 
he 's in real good form his talk would make those 
mamas and papas who think other mamas and 
papas should supply the boys for the trenches 
quite certain that he is a mean old thing, so there ! 
His whole theory of the art and practice of war 
he expresses in a motto of one line, " Kick 'em in 
the slats ! -' He is crude enough to think that 
spies should be shot, on the principle that one 
unshot spy will cause the deaths of innumerable 
American boys. Wholly differing in ideas with 
the good ladies who send flowers to murderers, 

178 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

and therefore differing with their prototypes in 
trousers at Washington, his voice sounds lonely 
in a land of sentimentalists administered by sen- 
timentalists as he advocates not only the shooting 
of spying Teutons, but also the shooting of Amer- 
ican lads caught sleeping when on sentry duty, 
inasmuch as sleeping sentries mean unnecessary 
deaths to their brothers in the trenches. He 
shares at least one idea with the great gray fight- 
ing machine that for years has beaten the whole 
world to a standstill and will continue victorious 
until we have sent a greater machine against it — 
he shares the Hindenburg idea with the rest of 
the " regulars '' of the army and navy, who surely 
know as much about their trade as the congenital 
pacifist does, who believe that a nation has no 
business in war unless it goes along with its work 
on the theory that war necessitates vulgar things, 
such as sticking a bayonet into a swine's belly 
when the swine charges, and turning the steel 
round half a dozen times without once pausing 
to sigh, " Really, swine, this hurts me more than 
it does you." 

This same splendid naval officer is quickest to 
praise the good work of the young and middle- 
aged volunteer officers that one finds at desks all 

179 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

over the capital now, even though the emotional 
ardor of the new desk officers at times causes him 
to share the indulgent smiles of his unemotional 
colleagues in the regular service. It was he who 
told me of the over-anxious young man who gave 
an unpleasant moment to the owner and pub- 
lisher of a New York daily newspaper published 
in the German language. 

In the course of his Washington duties the 
arduous young man happened upon a paragraph 
(in German, of course) printed on the front page 
of the New York daily. The young man jumped 
up with an indignant exclamation, made a broad 
blue-pencil mark round the offending paragraph, 
and then, knowing that the publisher of the 
paper happened to be in Washington, summoned 
him up on the carpet. 

" What do you mean, sir, by printing that? ■' 
cried the young man, tapping the marked para- 
graph angrily. The German-American newspa- 
per man adjusted his glasses, read the paragraph, 
and looked upon his inquisitor in amazement. 

" Why, my dear sir/' cried the publisher, 
" that is merely the British casualty list for the 
past month, officially sent forth by the British 
war authorities themselves. That list is first 

180 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

submitted to the censor in London, then it is 
handed to the Associated Press to be cabled to 
this country, next it is passed upon by the naval 
censorship office in Broad Street, New York, be- 
fore being released to the New York office of the 
Associated Press. And then the cable is edited 
in the Associated Press office, and finally sent 
broadcast to the association's newspaper clients 
in America, of w^hom my paper happens to be one, 
for publication. Y^ou will find that cable des- 
patch, sir, in almost every paper in America this 
morning, just as we have printed it, except that 
one of my staff, of course, translated it literally 
into German for our paper." 

" That 's it," stormed the young man, pacing 
his office. " The thing looks so damnable 
printed in German!^' 

There one has an example of the meticulous- 
ness of the novice which at its worst is only amus- 
ing. More edifying is the fine zeal which one 
sees at its best among the newly made officers, 
just out of mufti, who compose an important 
section of the Intelligence Department of the 
army. The very secretiveness of their work en- 
courages mystery and whisperings even out- 
side of office hours. Many of them have desks 

181*^ 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

in the War College, wliich is one building in a 
warring Washington into which, so far as I could 
learn by actual experiment, the casual visitor 
may not roam at will. In a way they do much 
work popularly supposed to be done by our Se- 
cret Service operatives in war-time. And it is 
well that so many of these new officers, who in a 
recent civilian state had been writers, profes- 
sional men of parts, or engaged in other voca- 
tions that required brains, have been promptly 
put, once they received their commissions, at the 
intelligence work they are now doing. They 
have immeasurably more intellect than the aver- 
age Secret Service operative for one thing, which 
partly, not altogether, makes up for their lack 
of "detective" training; and again, it is well 
that somebody, anyhodyy at last has been put to 
work at ferreting out the dangerous aliens and 
their kind who are bold enough even to continue 
right up to the present time to use our postal 
service in their underground plottings. 

Now it is popularly supposed that our Secret 
Service, since our entry into the war and before, 
was devoting its great machinery and its splen- 
did archives to the work of running down spies. 
The Secret Service was not and is not doing any- 

182 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

thing of the sort. Under a fool law passed by 
Congress about ten years ago the Secret Ser^dce 
must confine its activities solely to running down 
and arresting counterfeiters and protecting the 
person of the President! We have one of the 
best Secret Service organizations, considering its 
inadequate size, in the world, and the service has 
been, especially since the Civil War, adding to 
its archives until to-day its " rogues' gallery '' 
and kindred photographs and data are of vast 
value, or would be if the laws of the United 
States permitted the Secret Service to perform 
the duties for which it was organized and devel- 
oped. But it is only by breaking the laws of 
the United States that the Secret Service can 
interest itself in spies or any other law-breakers, 
unless the criminal be a counterfeiter or an as- 
sailant of the person of the President. Never- 
theless, citizens of the land almost to a man, 
even trained " crime " reporters on the great 
metropolitan newspapers, who pride themselves 
on knowing about every New York police captain 
by his first name, persist in believing that when 
a spy or German plotter is arrested his detection 
was due to the Secret Service. The crime ex- 
perts of the newspapers always — not usually, 

183 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

but always — are insisting in print that " an au- 
tomobile filled with Secret Service men dashed 
up to the building and arrested Fritz von Frank- 
furter and his entire office staff on the charge 
that the Teutons had violated the espionage act/' 
They are not " Secret Service men " who dash 
up and grab Fritz and his brother felons. The 
Secret Service men would like nothing so much 
as an opportunity to devote their talents and 
equipment to that very work of trailing Fritz 
and putting him away for a long, long time ; but 
the law says, " No, you must devote your whole 
energies solely to running down counterfeiters 
and supplying enough men to guard the Presi- 
dent when he takes the air." 

During all the sickening months, years, that 
bombs were bursting on our docks, in our muni- 
tions factories, aboard our outbound ships, there 
were fewer Secret Service men engaged in trying 
to "gef the perpetrators of these and like 
crimes throughout the country than there are, 
by actual count, chorus men in any good-sized 
Broadway musical comedy; and it was only by 
subterfuge, by " borrowing " Secret Service oper- 
atives from the Treasury Department, wliich con- 
trols the service, that even one Secret Service 

184 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

man was engaged in spy work. From the days 
of Boy-Ed and even earlier the Secret Service 
implored the powers at Washington for permis- 
sion to swat the spies, but without success. No, 
they were informed, the Department of Justice 
would attend to the spies, this despite the fact 
that the function of the Department of Justice 
is primarily punitive, not preventive. Where- 
fore a great untrained body of volunteers in the 
Department of Justice, thousands of amateur 
sleuths, straightway began to sherlockholmes 
and mess round in the muddle, while the very 
efficient Secret Service men impatiently warmed 
office-chairs in Washington and New York, pray- 
ing that the monotony would be varied by a swing 
round the circle with the President, or that 
Beppo would begin again to try to coin anemic 
lead quarters in his cellar in Little Italy, any- 
thing that would give the operatives a bit of 
fresh air. And the administration folk not only 
told the Secret Service to obey the law that 
makes it unserviceable, but also warned it to 
keep secret the fact that it was not permitted to 
search for spies, since the " public effect would 
be bad if the people generally were permitted to 
know that the Secret Service'' was not secret- 

185 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

servicing. But inasmuch as all Germany, any 
one who cared to look up the law, knew the de- 
plorable conditions that hobble our Secret Serv- 
ice, why not let a general public that pays for 
the Secret Service have an inkling of the news? 
Why make a plea of " patriotism '' in order to 
retain on the Federal statutes a law so absurd 
that the Government is ashamed to admit pub- 
licly that the fool statute exists? Why not kick 
the law into the discard right out in front of 
everybody? Congress enacted it during the sec- 
ond Roosevelt Administration immediately after 
it had become known that the Secret Service, for 
good and sufficient reasons of its own, had been 
looking into certain activities of a little group of 
congressmen; and year in and year out, in ses- 
sion after session since the law was passed, for 
years that number almost a dozen, the Secret 
Service has tried to get Congress to untie the 
dangerous hobbles that fasten the feet of the 
splendid organization. Congress as steadily re- 
fuses. 

A month or so after we had entered the war 
the Secret Service clamored so raucously that 
the administration finally was influenced to find 
a way round the law whereby a few, a very few, 

186 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

of the operatives were granted an opportunity 
to take up spy investigations after a fashion. 
More recently there has been a slight increase in 
the number of Secret Service men " borrowed " 
from the service for this work. May the Gov- 
ernment continue to see the light. In the mean- 
time the Secret Service is deplorably hobbled. 
The loyalty and energy of the Department of Jus- 
tice enthusiasts are not being questioned here, 
unless one stops to question the loyal quality of 
a petty jealousy among some of the Department 
of Justice men, who resent all attempts of the 
Secret Service operatives to have a part in the 
spy investigations. 

All of which has been gone into here at some 
length with the hope that the fatuous man in the 
street will remember, when he is proudly talking 
of the radiant qualities of our Secret Service in 
war-time, that under the law that radiance must 
be hidden under a bushel-basket ; also to remem- 
ber that the total amount being spent by the 
Government to maintain hoth the entire Secret 
Service of the country and the investigating 
branch of the Department of Justice for a whole 
year is less than von Bernstorff dealt out gladly 
in one month to pay for the operation of the Ger- 

187 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

man Secret Service in New York Citj alone. 

In view of these things, therefore, it is well 
that among the examples of the new army in 
Washington are several brilliant men in their 
thirties and just beyond, noted in their recent 
mufti days for mental power that lifted them 
above the herd, who now are giving their days 
and nights to hard work in the Intelligence De- 
partment. As to the number, ^^ several " is the 
best one can say in trying to foot up the total; 
the exact number cannot, of course, be told here. 
Their zeal in their work is sometimes so intense, 
on duty and off, that it would often be amusing 
if it were not also so commendable. They don't 
quite go to the extreme of wearing false whiskers, 
but the very young among them come close to 
doing so. 

One of their number quite had me thinking 
for a time that he was the last word in secretive- 
ness. Across his khaki-clad chest he sported a 
bit of ribbon which indicated that he had seen 
service in a campaign, but he would not say in 
what campaign. While the young campaigner 
and a grizzled old Indian-fighter in the regular 
army and I were settling world problems in the 
lobby of a hotel one evening I made it a point to 

188 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

try to find out just which war, of the world he 
had served through. 

^' Oh, in one of our Indian wars out West," 
finally he admitted lightly but would give no de- 
tails. Secretly I marveled. He was in his mid- 
thirties, and therefore too young, I thought, to 
have been a soldier when the redskins took to the 
war-path, unless he had drawn his sword at about 
the mature age of eight years at Wounded Knee, 
which was the last Indian argument worth while 
that I in my ignorance could recall. The hoary- 
headed old West Pointer standing with us, who 
had " fit the Injuns'' from the Bad Lands to the 
Rio Grande in his younger days, snorted with 
extreme politeness, and then gazed blankly at the 
'^' youngster.'' Evidently the grizzled veteran of 
the plains marveled over the matter longer than 
I, for I had forgotten the y©ung captain and his 
campaign ribbon when, a few days later, I ran 
into the white-haired regular army officer again. 
" That kid's Indian campaign kept me awake 
nights," cried the old colonel ; " so yesterday I 
decided to look up his record. He 's right ; he 's 
one of these Indian-fighters all right. It seems 
that a short time back there was a frowzy old 
chief — he 's probably died since of the D. T.'s — 

189 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

out in Wyoming yvho liked bis liquor. One 
Round-Up day this chief, Pink Elephant and his 
missus, Queen Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire-Water, or 
whatever her name is, — the old girl doted on the 
hard stuff, too, and at last accounts was ninety 
years old and threatened with cirrhosis of the 
liver, — floated into town and stole a small keg 
of Cheyenne's best poison. So Pink Elephant 
and Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire-Water rolled the keg 
up the Big Lumps to a ledge w^here Pink Ele- 
phant's two sons and Alice's sister, old Aunt Liz- 
zie-Kick-A-Hole-In-The-Sky, were awaiting the 
return of the travelers. 

" After the first long drink out of the keg Pink 
Elephant and bis two sons declared war on the 
United States of North America. They took a 
second swig and declared war also on Canada and 
British Columbia, and after a third round they 
delivered a final ultimatum which gave Mexico 
only one hour to accept their terms. Then, with 
all North America beaten to its knees, Pink Ele- 
phant, Alice, Aunt Lizzie, and the boys rolled 
the remnants of the keg to the highest crag over- 
looking the reservation, and until far into the 
night they defied Ireland and Japan also, punc- 
tuating their defies with rifle-shots that were 

190 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

threatening to make fine cut out of the local In- 
dian agent's whole private stock of eating plug. 

^' They were too far up the crag to send a po- 
lice-patrol wagon to the high spot to get -em, so 
the agent telephoned into town for a squad of 
National Guardsmen to ride out and end the 
frightful conflict. Along came the squad, and 
in the band was this bad Injun-fighter we met in 
the lobby here the other night. By the time he 
and the rest of the guardsmen had shinned up 
the crag, Pink Elephant, Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire- 
Water, old Aunt Lizzie-Kick-A-Hole-In-The-Sky, 
and Pink's boys w^ere sleeping the war off ; so the 
guardsmen gathered up the Injuns one by one 
and poured them all back into the keg. That 
was the beginning and the end of the great Pink 
Elephant Uprising, but it seems that this drunk 
and disorderly case got into the records of the 
War Department. Therefore it became an In- 
dian War, therefore this lad here is entitled to 
his bit of baby ribbon across the chest. Yes, sir^ 
that young veteran 's got a perfect right to look 
upon this war with Germany in that kindly w^ay 
that all old-time campaigners look upon every 
new scrap that starts.'^ 

But let the old regulars of the army and navy 
191 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

wax sarcastic, the youngsters at least are fran- 
tically eager to learn all about their new jobs, 
which is more than can be said about some of the 
venerable West-Pointers and Annapolis men who 
are versed only in the art of war as practised 
during the smaller scraps of the preceding gen- 
eration. For one thing, that young man with the 
harmless bit of ribbon on his proud chest had had 
during a recent civilian life, like many of his 
brother officers of the new army now in Wash- 
ington, a business training which regular officers 
wholly lack, and the war work at the capital is 
largely just plain business. The young men 
from civil life respect the purely military knowl- 
edge of the regulars and work hard to absorb 
some of it ; but the set old regular not only has no 
regard for the volunteer officer as a soldier, but 
shows no great anxiety to learn the rules of 
modern business efficiency which many of the vol- 
unteers know backward. If the oldsters would 
only permit the young veteran of the Pink Ele- 
phant Uprising and his kind to jump into the 
work for which they are best fitted, they could 
do much to relieve the gray-haired regular army 
majors and colonels and the bald-heads among 
the nav}''s departmental officers in Washington 

192 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

of an immense amount of necessary, but unimpor- 
tant, detail that the older men still think they 
must attend to. It is a difficult mater, seemingly 
impossible, to make the bald-heads understand 
in Washington that this is a war that necessi- 
tates the renunciation of lifelong professional 
habits, motheaten methods that the older regu- 
lar officers had been cultivating assiduously from 
the day they were graduated from West Point or 
Annapolis up to and including the present war- 
whirl in Washington. 

The " old man " still thinks he must keep up 
his practice of personally reading all contracts 
from beginning to end, must read and answer all 
official correspondence, no matter how trivial, 
relating to his own particular office business. 
And he tries to, even with the war-rush piling his 
desk so high with " business " that if he sat up 
all night every night, — and some of the regular 
officers are doing that frequently, too, in their 
mad efforts to handle personally office work 
which months ago had passed far beyond the 
limits of a one-man job, — he could n't begin to 
take care of a fraction of the new business 
dumped daily upon his desk. 

Perhaps it would not be a bad idea to devise 
193 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

a new program of training at the capital of a 
reciprocal nature: while the new officers fresh 
from civil life are being taught at least the rudi- 
ments of purely military knowledge, maybe it 
would be well to send the old West Point and 
Annapolis men for an hour or so a day to one or 
another of the recently created war offices in 
Washington over which the " captains of indus- 
try '' preside. There, in the presence of the 
" dollar-a-year " men at the head of Red Cross 
or Council of National Defense w^ork, the old 
army and navy departmental heads might wax 
wiser merely by sitting still for an hour or so 
and closely observing the way in which a Henry 
P. Davison or a Bernard M. Baruch canters right 
by detail without giving it a passing nod of rec- 
ognition. The brilliant masters of business tech- 
nic who have moved Wall Street to Washington 
so thoroughly that at last America, like other 
lands, owns a national capital which also has be- 
come the real business capital of the country, 
would no more think of permitting petty detail to 
interfere, as the military man still insists upon 
doing, with the magnificent work they are doing 
in Washington than Henry P. Davison, say, 
would think of remarking as he entered his old 

194 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

office in the house of Morgan at Broad and Wall 
streets, " Boy, bring me all the mail that has been 
delivered to the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. dur- 
ing the past twenty-four hours." 

It may be recalled that in the old days of a 
peacefulness that now passeth understanding the 
regular navy man under his breath always re- 
ferred to the Naval Reserve militiamen as the 
" Naval Preserves,'' and the regular army men 
looked upon the National Guard as something 
that was more to be pitied than censured. And 
now when department offices in Washington are 
clogged with volunteer officers who never had 
even militia training, but could write books on 
business efficiency, the old-time regular is more 
than ever certain that he personally must do 
everything, big and little, in his particular mili- 
tary shop. The regular, who for years had not 
worn a uniform when he could get out of it, 
whose secret sorrow it is now that he must wear 
a uniform all the time, gazes scornfully at the 
fancy fur collars on the new officers' overcoats, 
at the Sam Brown belts running at a rakish di- 
agonal across swelling chests, at fierce new spurs 
that never, perhaps, will dig into the flanks of 
anything more spirited than the varnished oaken 

195 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

output of Grand Rapids. And to the regular 
officer these expensive fur collars and natty Sam 
Brown belts which the new army exults in, — or 
did until the Government finally stripped these 
hits of personal vanity from the shoulders of all 
the grand young army of type-writing dragoons 
in Washington, — were only concrete evidence 
that the wearers thereof never could rise to the 
intellectual heights in the art of war where it 
becomes necessary to dictate a mighty military 
message that runs: 

'^Dear Sir: 

''Yours of the 12th inst. regarding price on pint 
of ink for this office at hand. For the luvva Pete, 
quit sending prices on pint bottles of ink — send the 
ink." 

It goes without saying that the thought and 
text of the sample communication just quoted is 
pure hypothesis. Thoroughly as do the young 
men wearing brand-newViniforms in Washington 
know that the business house they have just left 
undoubtedly would send out for a bottle of ink 
quite as snappily as that, quite as well, and sadly, 
do they know that Washington military bu- 
reaucracy never would venture upon such snap- 

196 



SHERMAN WAS RIGHT 

piness. The way one gets a new bottle of ink 
in the War Department is first to salute and ask 
one's immediate superior to salute and ask his 
superior to salute and ask his superior to begin 
to tune up the entire mass of machinery which 
must be called into play w^hen a government office 
needs a fresh bottle of ink. Week by week the 
campaign to capture the bottle of ink progresses ; 
right arms salute with a whirring as of a great 
flock of windmills, battery after battery of type- 
writers are wheeled into action. Then one day 
a month or two later, as the bottle of ink, pant- 
ing from its long flight, but still leaping from 
bough to bough and from crag to crag to escape 
the lasso of bright crimson tape being flung at 
its neck — about this time the new young officer 
who a month before had asked for a bottle of ink 
calls an office boy to his desk, reaches into his 
private pay-envelop, and cries, ^^ Jimmy, for 
Gawd's sake run out and buy me a bottle of 
ink ! '' Meanwhile the red tape lasso continues 
to — 

But a mere mention of the crimson tape, the 
red woolen yarn, and the various other ruddy- 
hued skeins and spools of entanglements, all 
piled high for instant use on the dusty depart- 

197 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

mental shelves in Washington, gives one pause 
before entering upon a dissertation of the tape 
entanglements. 

One must stop and take a deep breath before 
touching even lightly upon a few, very few, con- 
crete instances of the great indoor sport of un- 
tangling the tape. 



198 



CHAPTER VIII 

ALL BOUND ROUND WITH A RED WOOL STRING 

So slow to start, 
So fleet of foot— when far afield! 

NOTHING is so impressive round the capital 
in these days as the speed with which bu- 
reaucracy unties the surrounding entanglements 
of crimson tape long enough to let a new idea 
in — nothing, perhaps, except the speed with 
which bureaucracy chucks the new idea right out 
again. 

Take, for example, the case of Barney Flynn 
of Kenosha, Wisconsin. We shall call him Bar- 
ney Flynn and say he is from Kenosha because 
that's his name and that's where he is from. 
Incidentally, Barney is a living proof that oc- 
casionally there is great good even in war con- 
tractors. Barney had an idea, which he brought 
to Washington, and he continued to push his idea 
through the portals of bureaucracy until he and 
his idea soon were tangled up in one brand of 

199 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

red-tape that Houdini himself might hesitate 
about attempting to untie. 

This worst brand of tape is the sort that has 
stamped all along its length the legend, repeated 
over and over again, " The department never did 
anything like that before." Consequently, Bar- 
ney Flynn was licked before he started, for he 
had had the audacity to come to town to try to 
influence the War Department actually to do 
something which it never had done before! 

Barney's idea was simplicity itself. Listen. 
The United States had just entered the World 
War ; it was about to draft an army of hundreds 
of thousands of young men. Young men must 
have something to sleep upon at night, especially 
lads so utterly fagged out as these new soldier 
boys were sure to be after the untold hours of 
drill that would be their share in American and 
European training camps; therefore the depart- 
ment would need hundreds of thousands of new 
cots ; and Barney Flynn had come from Kenosha 
to Washington to tell the War Department that 
his firm, which happens to own the largest bed- 
making plant in the world, could turn out ten 
thousand of more light steel cots a day, virtually 
indestructible, at a price considerably less per 

200 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

cot than tlie department was paying for the 
flimsy affairs of wood and canvas that probably 
first came into use during the Second Punic War, 
and which must be replaced every few weeks. 

Keep in mind, please, that the army needed 
cots in a tremendous hurry, that Barney Flynn 
could guarantee to turn cots out in a tremendous 
hurry, that he w^as offering the War Department 
the best model of an article to be found in the 
market for less money than the department was? 
paying for the w^orst, all of which seems perfectly 
fair. Also be good enough to remember that 
these simple facts were all thoroughly known to 
the cot-buying officials of the War Department. 
On the face of things it would seem to the average 
tw^o-legged man that if Barney Flynn were to 
walk up to a large sorrel horse, blind with cata- 
racts and stone-deaf in both ears, and make such 
a proposition, the old sorrel nag would still have 
enough horse sense left to w^hinny its approval 
instanter. Ah, little does the average two- 
legged man realize the importance which bureau- 
cracy places on its unanswerable argument, 
" We 've never done it before." 

The War Department had no cots except a 
very few of the canvas and wooden contraptions 

201 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

of antiquity, for which it paid |3.75 apiece. 
Barney Flynn's cot, made of old railroad steel 
rerolled, as comfortable as a bed, attractive to 
the eye and capable of supporting a dead weight 
of more than three thousand pounds, — all of 
which Barney demonstrated satisfactorily to the 
department, — could be purchased from Barney 
at the rate of ten thousand a day at a cost of 
only 13.10 each. An order for, say, two hundred 
thousand of the best cots would mean a saving 
to the department of over |130,000 as compared 
with an order for the same number of worst cots, 
not to mention the immeasurable economy in 
buying a cot that would have to be replaced every 
few weeks. 

Even before Barney had breezed into Washing- 
ton all these indisputable facts had been ham- 
mered at bureaucracy. The top-notch salesmen 
of Barney's firm had bobbed up in the capital 
immediately upon the outbreak of war, and 
with confidence in their innocent hearts had told 
the department all. If the salesmen had had 
a bit more experience with the methods of what 
has not inappropriately been called " Washing- 
ton, B. C," they would have known that if a thing 
" never has been done before," it is next to im- 

202 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

possible to find a bureau chief wlio offhand will 
do it. There ain't no such animal. The cot 
salesmen should have remembered the experiences 
of predecessors innumerable who vainly had 
tried to offer the Government the first successful 
Lewis gun, the first successful submarine, and 
uncounted other first successful military ideas 
which Americans of initiative sadly had to wrap 
up again, and then successfully peddle to some 
other Government. And so the crack salesmen 
were compelled to decamp from Washington in 
disgust and sadly break the news to Barney 
Flynn that the directing military-supplies gentle- 
man of a cotless army, which was about to enter 
the greatest war, had refused even to discuss the 
self-evident fact that countless cots of some sort 
would have to be purchased immediately. The 
heap big chiefs at Washington, so the salesmen 
reported, had listened blankly to all the details 
offered, and then had solemnly turned away and 
resumed silently the chewing of the cud. 

" Well, men,'- said Barney Flynn, " I 'm not 
a regular salesman, but I think I '11 buy me a 
one-way ticket to Washington and stick round 
there for a spell." Whereupon into Washington 
from Kenosha slid Barney across a rainbow of 

203 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

hope. As proof that when an idea does get far 
enough past the outer red-tape entanglements its 
progress is rapid, one has only to be told that 
very few Washington days and nights had passed 
over the fair, but beaded, brow of Barney Flynn 
before he had brought bureaucracy round to the 
point where it was giving vent to spoken words. 
Instead of listening blankly and then turning 
away in silence to resume the cud-chewing, Bar- 
ney in time had progressed so far that a first lord 
of the army bedchamber opened his mouth long 
enough to say, " No ! " 

Thus encouraged, Barney Flynn sat up most 
of that night in his hotel room in Washington 
arranging photographs, blue prints, a prospectus 
describing his cot, and then sat round for an- 
other hour while trying to marshal a string of 
effective arguments into line. But try and try 
as he would, Barney could think of only one silly 
old argument : that his idea of offering the best 
article for less money than the prospective cus- 
tomer was paying for the worst had an element 
of common sense concealed in it somewhere. 
Barney stormed the portals of bureaucracy again 
and again and again. He varied his daily strug- 
gles through the red-tape entanglements one aft- 

204 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

ernoon by bringing along a little army he had 
drafted himself — about a score of husky work- 
men of an average weight of 165 and a fraction 
pounds. He set up one of his cots for the edifica- 
tion of bureaucracy, and then commanded eight- 
een units of his little army — a total weight of 
2976 pounds of humanity, or all that could find a 
foothold on the springs — to stand on the cot si- 
multaneously. And the eighteen stoop upon the 
assembled cot, the human overhang of the grin- 
ning group clasping one another about the waist 
to keep its balance; and the suspended cot- 
springs held the great weight without a single 
strand of steel wire showing any signs that the 
cot had begun to rip, ravel, or run down at the 
heel. 

Straightaway bureaucracy decided that this 
persistent Barney person must be squelched. If 
a thunderous '' No " I delivered each day with in- 
creasing volume, would not rid the department 
of his presence, it was time that the final step 
was taken. Down from a dusty shelf bureau- 
cracy took a phonograph record of its pet argu- 
ment, all bound round with red-woolen string, 
and after dusting it off began to let it squeak its 
rusty throated refrain : " Your idea has its mer- 

205 



THE WAR-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

its, but — it has never been done before." And 
then one morning when Barney Flvnn strolled 
into the department to spend the day as usual, 
listening to the record squeak and squeak, a first 
lord of the army bedchamber greeted him with 
brand-new animation. On the bureaucrat's face 
was a smile that glows best on the face of a man 
who realizes that for some time he has been 
merely stubborn, but suddenly has hit upon an 
argument that really is unanswerable. 

^^ Flynn," cried Bureaucracy, triumphantly, 
" your cot is impossible. We 've learned that 
your cot would take up about twice as much 
room in the hold of a freighter as the canvas cot. 
Of course whatever cot we buy will have to be 
shipped abroad in great quantities. In these 
days of ship shortage lack of bulk is all impor- 
tant.'' 

And genius having spoken, the office boy held 
the door open wide for the final exit of Barney 
Flynn. 

" Interesting, but unimportant," said Barney, 
removing his overcoat and pulling up a chair. 
" What 's the life of a canvas cot? " 

" Ninety days." 

" What 's the life of one of our steel cots? " 
206 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

" Er — years ; indefinite, I take it.'' 

" Well, for once you take it right. Ships car- 
rying the canvas cots to France would have to 
cross the ocean four times a year to keep the 
initial shipment replenished. The same fleet of 
freighters, loaded with steel cots, would make the 
trip once, and never have to make it again for 
the same purpose as long as the war lasted. So 
that ends that argument. Come! come! come! 
it 's your next shot." 

" Well — er — as we Ve told you repeatedly, 
Flynn, you are suggesting an idea which never 
has been tried in the whole history of this de- 
partment." Which left the entire matter back 
where it had been before God made iron and man 
made steel. And in the meantime the patter of 
thousands on thousands of the toddling feet of 
the new young, grand young Army of the Repub- 
lic could be heard as it began to approach from 
afar off, and it had not a crib in which to lay its 
head. 

Zowie! Suddenly upon Washington burst 
Julius Rosenwald as head of the supplies 
department of the Advisory Commission of the 
Council of National Defense. 

" Cots ! " cried Julius. 
207 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

^' We make 'em/' said Barney. 

" What kind? " said Julius. 

" Best for least," said Barney. 

^' How fast? " said Julius. 

" Ten thousand a day," said Barney. 

" Then why in the name of God and America 
do you stand around here talking about them ? " 
screamed Julius. " Make 'em ! dammit ! make 
'em ! " 

Barney Flynn's office equipment is his hat and 
the handiest long-distance telephone operator. 
He grabbed his hat, and in one jump landed feet 
first in a telephone-booth. And as he is the only 
person in the world who can squeeze compar- 
atively quick service out of the Washington tel- 
ephone company, it was not so indecently long 
a time before he was talking to the home plant 
in the middle West and telling the boss that he 
had better begin to rout out the night shift, inas- 
much as the factory had just got a little order 
that might take up a lot of the boys' spare mo- 
ments. As the result of a brief talk with a 
genius among merchants, who, throughout a ca- 
reer that had placed him in the forefront of a 
nation of mighty commercial geniuses, never had 
spurned goods because they happened to be the 

208 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

best for the least money, Barney Flynn had re- 
ceived an initial order for five hundred thousand 
of his cots at |3.10 each, a saving of 65 cents 
on each cot for the War Department, or a total 
saving, as compared with an order for the same 
number of cots of the Second Punic War type, 
of 1325,000 on this first order alone. If the steel 
cots had been sold at a dollar more apiece than 
the old cots they would have been worth the 
money to the army. Almost before Barney could 
get the Washington exchange to put his second 
long-distance call through to the home plant he 
had sold the army |3,000,000 worth of cots, once 
real business had taken bureaucracy by the 
throat and had shaken some sense into it. Then 
Barney evolved a hospital " bed " from the hum- 
ble framework of his cot, lengthened the legs of 
the cot and ran a metal rod high above the 
springs to support mosquito netting, and he 
promptly sold the Government an initial con- 
signment of a quarter of a million of the hospital 
cots also. And only a few additional weeks of 
our war preparations had come and gone when 
the light little steel cots were forming real beds 
for weary soldier boys throughout the sixteen 
national training camps, the sixteen National 

209 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Army cantonments, and steadily were, and still 
are, being shipped to France. Doubtless of vast 
importance is the fortune saved on each order for 
the new cots, but of much more interest to all of 
us is a comment from the front concerning these 
cots which recently I happened upon. It means 
more than mere fortunes, because it tells of 
added rest and content which cots that bureau- 
cracy had spurned are bringing to our soldier 
boys in France. The comment on the cots oc- 
curred in the opening sentences of a letter from 
an American lad abroad which was published in 
a New York newspaper^ during our first war 
winter. 

"Dear Jo- Jo, Jo and Joe," the letter began, 
" our present camp is far superior to our first [in 
France]. We sleep in little iron beds, and I 
tell you the boys feel mighty good at the idea 
of going to bed for the first time in four 
months ! '' 

In view of which one might say that Barney 
Flynn, who merely stood and waited, also served. 

But, unfortunately, they are not all Barney 
Flynns, these war-order folk who form a great 
part of the boom-town element which clutters up 

1 New York Evening Sun, January 2, 1918. 
210 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

the capitaL Weaving throiigli the crowds in 
hungry fashion, in the hotel lobbies, the streets, 
clamoring for audience before the seats of the 
mighty, are the profiteers, in numbers so osten- 
tatious that their omnivorous omnipresence has 
caused Washington to coin the excellent word 
" patrioteer." And cheek by jowl with the pa- 
trioteers, brothers in spirit, are unnumbered in- 
ventors of the claptrap class. These, too, jam 
the corridors and entrances as they chatter of 
the merits of their particular patented camp-kit, 
belt buckle, or what not, which as a rule would 
be useful to no one except the inventor. If 
adopted by the Government, the knickknack in a 
day would put the inventive promoter in the en- 
viable state where annually he could swear off 
his war taxes. 

And then there is the other kind of " inventor,'^ 
he of the long hair and baggy clothes and moody 
countenance, pathetic souls who, like most of the 
rest of us, differ from the admittedly insane 
chiefly in the matter of residence. Let a yelp 
of excitement arise in any place in the land, and 
straightway the half witted will flock toward the 
uproar. Elijah Dowie had n't been in Manhat- 
tan a day when Carrie Nation, the gentleman 

211 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

who knew himself as "John the Baptist the 
Second/' and all the rest of the grand army of 
crackpates were coursing up and down Broad- 
way. And so the cordons of red-tape round the 
bureaucracies have at least one merit : they keep 
the half witted and their cracked ideas without 
the portals ; if one of them got far enough indoors 
he might have his " idea " adopted by some bu- 
reaucrat who, if he had a little more brains, 
would be half witted himself. One wonders 
where these poorly clad, underfed " inventors '' 
scraped together the car-fare to join the crowd 
that forms the new capital or how they live when 
they get there. To these poor devils the devel- 
opment of a counter-irritant for the U-boat peril 
seems chiefly to absorb their " thought." Nets 
projecting round the water-line of transports, no- 
tions quite as absurd about " magnetizing " the 
U-boats and so rendering them helpless, these 
and similar suggestions form by far the greater 
part of the stock of intellectual contributions 
which they seek to bring personally to the atten- 
tion of the Naval Consulting Board. It should 
be said in passing that Rear-Admiral William 
Strother Smith and his associates at the head of 
the inventions section of the new Naval Con- 

212 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

suiting Board, and their co-workers in the inven- 
tions branch of the army, now are welcoming any 
and all suggestions ; for tucked away in the silli- 
est notion sometimes may be found the germ of 
a valuable idea. 

One of the crackpates I met up with had blue 
prints of a war-ship which was to revolutionize 
navigation. Away with elaborate engines for 
marine motive power; just rig up a powerful 
pump in the ship, and the thing was done ! Be- 
low the water-line of the bow of the ship designed 
by this particular genius was to be a big round 
hole, with a similar hole below the water-line at 
the stern. The bow hole and the opening at the 
stern respectively were to form the entrance and 
exit of a great steel pipe which was to run the 
length of the hold. And attached to the pipe- 
line was to be a pump of tremendous suction 
power, which would draw the water into the pipe 
at the bow and send it out the stern opening, a 
racing " cable ''or " rope " of water which would 
pull the ship along at incredible speed. It was 
a cute little idea and extremely simple. 

And then I got into conversation with still an- 
other who had a scheme for wiping out the whole 
German navy in one quick moment, if the Gov- 

213 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ernment would but listen to him. All lie wanted 
the navy to do was to cut all the Atlantic cables 
quietly, close to the European shore, and then 
have the eastern ends of the cables picked up 
and hurriedly towed westward with great speed 
and secrecy. Next these loose ends of the cables 
were to be fastened to some good strong West In- 
dian island capable of standing the strain, and 
the cables were to be stretched tautly, leaving 
them in long strings just below the surface of the 
ocean and not far out from and generally par- 
allel with the Atlantic coast of the United States. 
Powerful mines were to be attached to the 
strings of cables, so close together that no fleet 
of ships could sail over the cables without some 
vital part of each vessel being compelled to pass 
directly above at least one of the mines. Then, 
when all was set, and all the mines had been 
connected up with electric wiring, a swift Amer- 
ican fleet was to cross the Atlantic and steam so 
tantalizingly close to the German coast that the 
whole German grand fleet would dash forth to 
give battle. Instantly the American fleet was to 
turn tail and flee for home harbors ; and just as 
the pursuing German fleet was crossing above the 
mine-laden cables — pop! pop! pop! and the 

214 



ALL BOUND BOUND 

whole German navj would — But the details 
of the horribly bloody slaughter are too sicken- 
ing to go into here. The idea presented only 
one possibility that prevented it from being per- 
fect: maybe the German fleet would not come 
out I 

Now, here was a genius who had a suggestion 
which had one thing in common with Barney 
Flynn's idea — neither had " ever been done be- 
fore." Bed- tape, or the stupidity which always 
is the concomitant of red-tape, had treated both 
ideas the same and barred them. The insane 
man and the man with the real idea were iden- 
tical in the eyes of bureaucracy. Therefore bu- 
reaucracy does not reason, therefore never is 
right except by accident; and the present is the 
last time in the history of the world to set any 
store on accident. 

How War Department bureaucracy can coddle 
an unimportant bit of picayune official procedure 
and exalt it to the high dignity of an unbreakable 
norm is best illustrated by the recent experiences 
in Washington of one of the country's foremost 
authorities on the science of forestry, a science, 
alas ! in which the nation is woefully deficient in 
knowledge and worse in practice. The scientist 

215 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

in mind was anxious to place his splendid stock 
of special knowledge at the service of a warring 
United States, w^herefore he was overjoyed upon 
receiving an urgent appeal from highest officers 
on America's battle-line in France, who knew of 
his remarkable mental equipment and energy, to 
hurry through the formalities of getting a com- 
mission and then join them as quickly as possible 
abroad. The American soldiers of very high 
rank had seen as soon as they arrived within 
earshot of the German guns in France that this 
leader in the science of forestry could render the 
American Army abroad a certain service they 
had in mind in better fashion than any man in 
all America. 

The forestry expert, so the army men had ex- 
plained when sending for him, first would have to 
get his commission before he would be able to 
Tvork properly with the army on the big job that 
had been mapped out for him by the general offi- 
cers abroad. Immediately the scientist, who is 
not old and is in perfect health, went before an 
army surgeon in Boston for his physical examina- 
tion. The surgeon noted a defect in the scien- 
tist's left eye. Yes, admitted the potential major, 
that left eye was n't of much use and had n't been 

216 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

since childhood ; nevertheless, it never had inter- 
fered, he added, with the quality and quantity 
of his work, a fact self-evident from the high 
place he had taken in his profession. And then 
he told in detail who it was that had asked, al- 
most commanded him to come into the service, 
the urgency of the need of his services in France, 
and the additional detail that the circumstance 
of the foggy left eye was known to the officers 
abroad who had sent for him. And the army 
surgeon in Boston, who figuratively was as far 
from the War Department's red-tape counter and 
its influences as the officers in France were, was 
still a normal human being. He "passed'' the 
scientist quickly, gave him a clean bill of health. 
Promptly the forestry man w^ound up his affairs, 
got his commission, and bought his khaki clothes 
with the little gold leaf on the shoulders. And 
then after kissing his youug wife and two chil- 
dren good-by in Boston, he jumped into a taxicab 
headed for the South Station, and immediately 
made a serious blunder : he bought a ticket that 
w^ould take him to Washington. 

He did n't want to go to Washington, he had 
to go. Preliminary work on his new job kept 
him there until the eve of the day he was to sail 

217 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

for France, kept him there so close to his sailing- 
time, in fact, that he had to bring his wife and 
children to the capital for the final farewell. 
Then, just before he was to board the train that 
was to take him to his point of embarkation for 
France, he and a little group of brother-officers 
who were to accompany him abroad went 
through the military etiquette of calling at the 
War Department to make a formal visit of brev- 
ity in the office of their immediate superiors be- 
fore leaving for France. There was a pleasant 
little function of a few minutes' duration, hand- 
shakes, a word of good luck and farewell from 
the superiors, then the open door leading to 
the avenue and the glories of fair France. 

The new major was in the act of backing re- 
spectfully out the open door. Ah, little did he 
know that on the instant one of those little 
bearded Glooms that Tom Powers scatters about 
his caricatures had, with saturnine grimace, 
stretched a tiny thread of red-woolen string 
above the door-sill to trip him. And at the mo- 
ment he was beginning to feel the corridor air 
currents on the back of his neck, just when 
he was thinking that the superior officer had 
played his last Victor record and was all fin- 

218 



ALL BOUND EOUND 

ished, the red string caught him in the back of 
the legs, and he was hamstrung ! 

" One — mo-ment, Majah," cried the superior, 
precisely as Columbus on another occasion had 
blurted suddenly to the second mate, "Hist! 
Can the chatter, mate ! Damme ! I see the ga- 
bles of a summer-resort hotel ! '^ " One — mo- 
ment! What 's wrong Tvi^th your left eye? ^' 

It was foggy, explained the new Majah. Fur- 
thermore, it always had been foggy. Its foggi- 
ness never had interfered in the slightest with 
the Majah's work. A general officer whose name 
is now a household word in America knew that 
left eye intimately, added the Majah, when 
despatching word to him to hurry to France. 

Wrong, all wrong; and with the feverishness 
that is noticeable in our best bureaucratic circles 
only when a real idea steps within range of the 
trusty old blunderbuss, the boss dug into the dust 
until he had brought to light the jolly old Rule 
Book, Vol. I, No. 1, which had been celebrated 
as a best seller in Government circles during the 
War of 1812. No, siree! Lookit, Majah! It 
says right here in print, at this here page, marked 
with the faded, old red baby ribbon, that no man 
with one defective eye may be sent into active 

219 



THE WAK-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

service, because if he were to lose the other eye 
he would " become a charge on the Government/' 
And gosh ! Majah, you had almost got out that 
door ! Whew ! 

Is that the only reason, Boss, for not letting 
a man with one defective eye tackle this job? 

Yep, and it 's enough, sir. Any rule that is a 
rule must be right or it would n't be a rule. 

But listen. Fathead, — I mean Field Marshal ; 
pardon me, — the rule does n't apply to me. 

How so? 

Because I am independently wealthy ; because 
I am gladly giving up a large part of my in- 
come to perform this needed service; because, 
if I lost my perfect eye, the loss would be of 
financial benefit to me, inasmuch as for reasons 
I have n't time to go into now, Boss, — I '11 miss 
my train if I don't get out of here soon, — I can 
make more money stone-blind at home here than 
I can serving with at least one perfect eye in 
France ; because — oh, dammit ! because you in- 
sult me when you say that I would make the 
Government support me if I were injured in 
France. Great heavens. Boss, do you mean to 
stand there and insist that the War Department, 
at a time like this, believes that a line of ancient 

220 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

type in that faded old almanac of 1812 is of more 
importance than a big job well done for the boys 
in France? 

Ab-so-lute-ly, Majah ! Tear up your passport, 
Majah ; you 're down — out — through. 

But, Boss, let me have a final word : I 'm not 
a " soldier " ; I don't make any pretense at being 
a military man. My soldier clothes, even my 
commission, are only mere technicalities, simply 
a part of the formalism, all necessary, no doubt, 
that must be gone through with before I can 
begin to unload my stock of intellectual goods 
at the point in the field where the army stands 
most in need of my — 

Hush, Majah! We executives have massive 
work here to do, and you are delaying it. Majah, 
this way out. 

And so the great services of that particular 
expert were lost to the lads in France, who 
needed him then and need him immeasurably 
more now. Bureaucracy would not permit him 
to tackle his job then, and it has not changed 
its " mind " since. 

In justice to red-tape, it must be said that 
nothing can show greater speed and efficiency 
in accomplishing what it sets out to do than the 

221 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

red-tape sections of the War Department. But 
bureaucracy shows speed only when doing some- 
thing wrong — always. Solemnly certain that 
fuss and feathers and stiff-necked observance of 
" etiquette • ' is of far greater importance than 
practical accomplishment, red-tape has been 
known to keep army supplies — to take only one 
instance of a number so vast that Washington 
has come to look upon stupidity as the accepted 
thing — lying at a railway freight-station at the 
capital for a few days less than a month, at a 
time when soldiers billeted in Washington were 
in immediate need of those supplies. It so hap- 
pened that at about the time the supplies reached 
the capital a certain officer in the department 
who, according to the rules, would have to be 
officially "notified," with much saluting and 
click of heels, that the goods had arrived before 
they could be released from bondage, had had 
himself thoroughly dusted off, and then had gone 
away from there to attend to some business in 
another city for a few weeks. The department 
knew that the shipment had arrived, the soldiers 
in crying need of the equipment knew it, every- 
body knew it. Doubtless the bureaucrat who 
had left town must have known that the articles 

222 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

would arrive about the time he was leaving or 
shortly after he had gone. But he had departed 
without delegating any one to receive the proper 
salutes in his absence ; wherefore for about four 
weeks, or until the officer had returned and had 
heard the heel-clicks with his own long and 
pointed and furry ears, the equipment lay idle 
in a freight-yard. The salute and heel-clicks 
were of first importance; the war and its needs 
were secondary ! 

Nothing could be more impressive than the 
speed with which bureaucracy (and bureau- 
cracy's blood kin, politics) put a shiny set of 
well-greased skids under Major General Leonard 
Wood in the first moments of the war, the skids 
pointed toward a spot which the Administration 
hoped fondly was the Land of Oblivion. In an 
instant bureaucracy ran so joyfully and so far 
forward to place the skids that it took the old 
gentleman days to puff back to his starting-point. 
When it came to ordering window-frames and 
doors for the wooden cities about to be built on 
cantonment sites, bureaucracy strained the 
creaky old spinal column in hurrying to do 
so simple a thing all wrong, once it had 
arranged all the preliminary details incorrectly 

223 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

down to the last botched detail. Old Man 
Bureaucrat Mmself ordered 330,000 doors and 
660,000 windows in a jiffy, quite overlooking 
the fact that the windows as ordered were 
not of the necessary standard size. Also the 
old boy, who daily was growing to look more 
like a bottle in that all his development was 
from the neck down, had ordered doors de- 
signed with the perpendicular panels of other 
days. Doors like that look lovely in the quaint 
old colonial homes of Salem, but it so happened 
that the mills which were to turn out the big 
order of doors for the cantonment shacks were 
equipped with machinery installed with the idea 
of making doors designed along the lines of the 
horizontal panels of modernity; and before the 
order could be filled the mill machinery would 
have to be ripped out and replaced. Fortu- 
nately, some one with at least a teaspoonful of 
gray matter woke up with a yawn at high noon 
and corrected the door and window errors at the 
last minute. 

Even shlphuilding was delayed by red-tape en- 
tanglements long after bureaucracy, politics, and 
everything else under heaven had ceased brawl- 
ing and chattering its monkey -language squabble 

224 




^ l! 




And tlien there is the other kind of "inventor" 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

as to what material the ships were to be built of. 
The preliminaries for the construction and op- 
eration of government shipyards at Bristol 
Point, Hog Island, and Port Newark were at- 
tended to with commendable alacrity, and then 
the contracts for building the yards where the 
ships were to be fashioned were all drawn up 
by General Goethals. Meanwhile, in that par- 
ticular week, and the next, and the week after 
that, and then for a stretch of many more weeks, 
the U-boats merrily were paving the floor of the 
ocean with anything in the shipping line that 
happened over the western horizon; and while 
those weeks stretched on and on and on several 
sweet old grandmothers in trousers sat in their 
Washington offices with their tatting in their 
laps, knitting skein after skein of bright-red yarn 
into cocoons that held the contracts splendidly 
inactive. To strip enough red yarn off those con- 
tracts to permit even the signing of the contracts 
took four months. 

Officers fresh from civil life, whose whole 
training, therefore, had been in another world, 
where red-tape and sand in the cylinders are syn- 
onymous, were put to work by the surgical 
branch of the army to select sites and complete 

225 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the preliminary arrangements for erecting re- 
ceiving hospitals for the wounded lads momen- 
tarily expected to arrive from France. Promptly 
they decided upon the sites and finished their 
work up to the actual first steps in building. 
Then they stood round expectantly, eager for 
grandma to make the next move. The autumn 
of 1917 came and went. Grandma glanced up 
from her tatting long enough to note that snow 
had begun to fill the December air. In time she 
had the withered old Christmas-tree taken out 
in the back yard and burned. The new year was 
growing from swaddling clothes to pinafores, to 
knickers; and all along the sodden fields of 
France the guns were thundering, and the lads 
from Painted Post and Louisville and Valley 
Stream were tumbling forward, their arms limp 
or shattered, legs ripped off by shrapnel, their 
jaws in bloody shreds. Dogs, even dogs, ran into 
hell to help them; but the sleek old grandmas 
tatted and tatted, deaf to the frantic appeals of 
onetime physicians and laymen, now in uniform, 
who ages before had selected the sites for receiv- 
ing hospitals that still were vacant lots, still just 
blank real estate. 

" The hospitals must be built some time,'' 
226 



ALL BOUND ROUND 

pleaded the officers over the long-distance tel- 
ephones from far cities. " Why not now? Any 
moment a shipload of the wounded will arrive ! '^ 

"Don't speak out of your turn, boys/' 
grandma replied sternly. ^^We shall take up 
the matter you speak of, whatever it is, when the 
proper time comes." What was promptness in 
caring for the lads soon to come back to the 
motherland, bent and broken forever, compared 
with preserving intact the " system " of glorious 
pomposity which to grandma is the beginning 
and end of things as they were! 

No mere volume could begin even to list the 
hospitals, the building materials, the ships, shoes 
sealing-wax, and the lives that red-tape strangled 
in the first weeks of the war, in the months that 
followed, and is continuing to strangle at the 
present time. That new major, whose necessary 
knowledge of forestry had been so lightly 
spurned parted from bureaucracy, I know, crest- 
fallen and almost ashamed of his own people, 

So slow to start, 
So fleet of foot — ^when far afield! 

But as he went out the door, bureaucracy sighed 
again easily, for had it not once more slipped 

227 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the rotting red-tape round the neck of common 
sense and sprung the trap? and, bravo! the an- 
cient strands again had withstood the strain. 

But some day soon — halleloojah ! it 's dawn- 
ing now — the noose and scaffold will disappear ; 
and Old Man Bureaucracy will be awakened at 
gray dawn and learn, as he puts on the plain 
black suit laid out for him, that the right leg of 
the trousers has been slit from the ankle stitch- 
ing to a point just above the knee; and in the 
half-light of the breaking day they will lead him, 
with much chantings, through a little doorway 
and seat him in a plain oaken chair equipped 
with spiral wires, wet sponges, many straps, and 
a dangling headpiece of thick leather. And then 
"while the chantings drone on, every one will step 
back a safe pace to the surrounding mats of gray 
rubber, and the blue-white juice will be turned 
on forever, and a curl of smoke will arise from 
his short hair. I have seen the thing done in 
all its sickening detail in the death house at Sing 
Sing — done to murderers who had killed only 
one man, who as a rule was of the murderer's 
own vile kind. And before many more have been 
added to the untold number of magnificent lads 
who have already suffered, died, that pomposity 

228 



ALL BOUND EOUND 

might prevail, the thing will be done to a bu- 
reaucracy wherein a " system " of crass stupidity 
and wretched stubbornness still continues to nur- 
ture these murderers of young American man- 
hood. 



229 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

NOBODY home — that is the feel in the air 
in and about the White House in these days 
of war. Gone is the hurly-burly of the Roosevelt 
days, of even the earlier ante-bellum days of the 
Wilson regime; gone the visiting brides and 
grooms who used to stroll along the now-deserted 
winding walks. Whether one wanders indoors 
among the semi-abandoned executive office fur- 
nishings or peers from afar through the iron 
fence at the graceful white facade, the feeling 
persists that perhaps the white walls house a 
crackly old parchment containing the Constitu- 
tion or some such abstraction ; but otherwise no- 
body home. To-day I saw a secretary's office and 
the President's office adjoining, which once upon 
a time were swarming with people, but are now 
silent, deserted, a vast gloom. The very police- 
men stationed on the grounds — and in these war 
days there are more than half a hundred of them 

230 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

partly concealed in and round the White House 

— are carefully crated in lonely -looking sentry- 
boxes that fit as tightly across the shoulders as 
a thirty-five dollar Harlem flat. 

To-night, here in the little hotel room for 
which the wife and I had to keep up a drum-fire 
for two nights and a day to get, I can^t help but 
make a mental contrast of things I have seen in 
and around the White House to-day with some- 
thing else that happened on a night in recent 
years in the same business end of the Executive 
Mansion, or what was once the business end of 
it. The incident of a few years ago which comes 
to mind to-night was only one of many which 
once made the large secretarial office in which 
Mr. Tumulty now has his desk hum along hap- 
pily day by day. To-day that rectangular office, 
and particularly the circular office adjoining 
which the President now rarely uses, especially 
drove home the feeling that one had sacrilegi- 
ously stepped into the sanctified cheerlessness of 
the horror known in New England as the " spare 
bedroom." On the night I have in mind — it 
was during the second Roosevelt administration 

— a group of the Washington correspondents of 
New York newspapers, their work finished for 

231 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the night, were sitting with the then President's 
secretary in the rectangular office. Most of 
them w^ere sitting on their spines, chairs tilted 
back, feet cocked ceilingward into the clouds of 
tobacco smoke, while in hushed tones — it was 
almost midnight — they talked of an editorial 
which that morning had appeared in New York^s 
most brilliantly written newspaper. Dislike of 
the President and all things Rooseveltian had 
driven the editor man to the extreme of suggest- 
ing that the high-priced alienists who were look- 
ing into the sanity of a noted murderer then on 
trial in New York might better be giving their 
time and talents to inquiring into the sanity of 
a noted personage in Washington. 

" All day we 've been busy keeping that news- 
paper out of the President's way/' whispered the 
secretary. " The colonel is all run down and 
jumpy from too much work, and if he ever read 
that editorial he 'd come nearer going crazy than 
even that editorial writer tries to make believe 
he—" 

A loud laugh, coming from a corridor leading 
to the interior of the White House, interrupted 
the secretary. Hurried steps approached. The 
door was pushed open with a rush, and into the 

232 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

tobacco smoke of the secretary's office burst an 
excited personage with a copy of the New York 
newspaper in his hand. It was the President of 
the United States. Correspondents and the sec- 
retary jumped to their feet respectfully. 

" I 've got under their skins ! I 've hurt 'em ! " 
cried the Colonel, grinning beatifically, exult- 
ingly, smacking his hand on the newspaper. 
" Look at this, boys ! I 've got 'em on the mat, 
where the best they can do is yell that I 'm crazy. 
By George ! that 's bully ! " And a President 
who had been ordered to climb under the quilts 
as early as possible every night during those days 
of overworked and frazzled nerves sat down hap- 
pily amid the tobacco clouds and, himself quite 
one of the boys, chatted with Dick and Hank and 
Sam and the rest of the lads in chummy fashion. 
Doubtless if one of them had suggested that the 
President jam on his slouch-hat and walk a part 
of the way home with the correspondent before 
turning in, he would have done it. 

Fancy the present occupant of the White 
House bursting in upon a group of reporters at 
midnight, or at noon, and sitting down to chat 
in chummy fashion! Let some one else fancy 
it ; I can't. There was only one day — March 5, 

233 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

1913 — when, so far as can be recalled, anything 
approaching chumminess enlivened the offices of 
the present President and his secretary, those 
rooms which in recent months have almost gone 
into the silences. On that March day Mr. Wilson 
put his feet for the first time under the Presiden- 
tial desk w^hich now he rarely sees. Also it w^as 
the first day on which Mr. Bryan attempted to be 
a Secretary of State. Visiting delegations came 
and went every minute on the minute, each group 
headed by a beaming charter member of the 
Society of the First Man to Suggest Woodrow 
Wilson's Name for President. The office of the 
President and the Tumulty office connected with 
it w^ere aglow^ with cut flowers, potted plants, and 
the Hon. J. Ham Lewis arrayed in the flossiest 
of springtime creations. In and out through the 
doorw^ay that connected the two offices, patter- 
ing and chattering and beaming like a small boy 
with a brand-new little red w^agon to play with, 
flitted the new Secretary of State, his freshly-var- 
nished three-quart high hat tilted far back from 
his beaded brow, so that just a fringe of his 
heavy-tragedian locks stuck out abaft the over- 
hang of the three-quart tile. As the newest Sec- 
retary of State paused at times long enough to 

234 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

gather a fresh batch of the delegations about him, 
one's thoughts persisted in going back to boy- 
hood scenes on a Saturday night in the old home 
town up-State; the old horse-drawn victoria 
standing close to the curb at the corner of Main 
and Washington streets ; a smoky torch-light flar- 
ing above the driver's seat; cartons containing 
dollar bottles of Kickapoo Indian Sawga Pain 
Exterminator and Hair Restorer piled high 
about a gentleman wearing long black hair and 
a three-quart polished hat. Step closer, men. 
First a little song and banjo music, good pee-pul, 
and then, men, I shull demunstrate the marvel- 
ous pain-killing propaties of this great remedy 
handed down to us, men, by the wise old med- 
icune men of the great Kickapoo Indian tribe! 

There was a human touch, back on that far- 
away March day in an era of now unbelievable 
peacefulness, in those same White House rooms, 
a picnicy atmosphere, a twittering of happy ex- 
citement akin to commencement day in a boys' 
boarding-school. There was a festiveness that 
made even the sartorial outbursts of the Hon. J. 
Ham Lewis seem as appropriate as the golds and 
brocades on a circus elephant. One even caught 
a glimpse of the new President's very coat-tails 

235 



THE WAH-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

as his exuberant Secretary of State darted in and 
out through the connecting door — a door that 
seemed to give the mere onlooker a sort of in- 
timate touch with greatness, but at the same time 
suggested walled seclusion which held the i^ro- 
letariate a million miles away from the imme- 
diate person of the pee-puFs choice. 

But now! Ah, now is something else again! 
To-day as I approached the White House fence 
I remembered having been told that even the 
grounds were closed to all but the chosen. 
Hadn't visiting writing-folk said in print that 
no one can get into government buildings in 
Washington during these war-days, least of all 
approach the White House doors, unless one 
owns a pass decorated with the owner's photo- 
graph? I remembered having read such articles, 
decorated with half-tones showing Government 
guards holding back the potential visitors while 
scrutinizing the photographs on the passes. 
True, only the day before I had walked boldly 
into the north entrance of the State, War, and 
Navy building without passes, photographs, in- 
fluence, letters, or even personal acquaintance- 
ship with a single soul inside the building, and 
merely by asking permission to see a soldier in 

236 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

the War Department whose name I had once 
heard mentioned, but who did not know that I so 
much as existed, I had been permitted to wander, 
unaccompanied, down a corridor and into an of- 
fice in the innermost recesses of the War Depart- 
ment. And half an hour later, in quite the same 
care-free manner, I had penetrated to the desks 
of men supervising the new war inventions in a 
little building across tlie way that houses an over- 
flow of the consulting board of the navy. 

Still, the feeling was ingrained that I could n't 
get into the White House grounds, not to men- 
tion the executive offices of the White House. 
Perhaps the guards, however, — thus I mused to- 
day, or almost a year since our war declaration, 
as I walked toward the White House, — will per- 
mit me to stand near enough to the north curb of 
Pennsylvania Avenue to holler the news through 
a megaphone that years ago, when I was a Jer- 
sey City commuter, I had become well-enough 
acquainted with the Hon. Joseph Patrick Tu- 
multy to walk right up to him and cry, " Well, 
bless us and save us, if here ain't Joe!" And 
maybe Joe would open a window or something 
and wave to me, or even go so far as to step out- 
side for a moment and — 

237 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Heavens! I came out of my musings with a 
jerk, and found myself standing inside the White 
House grounds. With my head bowed and 
dreaming, I had become so concentrated upon 
all these weighty matters that thoughtlessly, me- 
chanically, I had walked through the wide-open 
west gate leading to the President's offices, as 
wide open as the gates on the north side were 
carefully closed ; and I had pulled myself out of 
my state of coma only upon finding myself stand- 
ing within a dozen feet of the door leading to the 
executive offices in the west wing of the White 
House. Horror of horrors ! a lone, but brawny, 
Washington cop was sleepily propped on the 
driveway, his back to me and seemingly in the 
throes of gazing in fixed fashion into some large 
land of nothingness lying back of nowhere. I 
had come leagues inside the White House 
grounds without realizing it; unconsciously I 
had passed behind the broad back of the police- 
man and now was closer to the door than the 
officer was. Gosh ! Suppose he should whirl 
about, see me, and fire before asking questions ! 

" Uh-uh-uh-uh officer ! " I cried. Oh, I was 
scared all right ! And hurriedly I started to ad- 
dress him, so that he would realize that it was 

238 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

only by accident that I had got so close to a 
White House door. " Officer ! " I called again, 
and he turned round lazily and regarded me 
without showing any slight trace of absorbing in- 
terest in me or my travels. " Uh — officer, I — 
I wish to find the President's offices. Uh — 
Secretary Tumulty — he — " 

"Well," broke in the bluecoat in withering 
tones, " there 's the door in front of you,'' — as 
who would say: "Yuh got yur foot on the 
^ Welcome ' sign on the doormat. Whatcha want 
me to do, yuh poor fish ? CARRY yuh in ? " 

I backed away scared, and instantly brought 
myself up sharply with another start. I was 
inside. Seated in a sort of reception-lobby was 
a middle-aged person who was quite as well ac- 
quainted with me as I am with the Akhund of 
Swat. But, so I decided the instant he frowned 
upon me, he '11 know me in a minute, and never 
will he permit me to pass beyond him into the 
executive offices ; for the secretary's office opens 
into the President's office, which opens into a cor- 
ridor, which in turn leads into the living-rooms 
of the White House. He '11 list my pedigree for 
three generations back ; he '11 make me unroll my 
folded newspaper to make sure that it does n't 

239 



THE WAR-WHIEL IN WASHINGTON 

contain a length of gas-pipe plugged at each end ; 
and finally he 11 hold me head downward by the 
heels and shake me, following which he undoubt- 
edly will kick me violently back into whatever 
part of the Pennsylvania Avenue asphalt he 
thinks I should be decorating. And I had no 
pass, no card of introduction to save me; noth- 
ing. If he would only begin ! But he stared si- 
lently. 

" Er — I — I should like to see Secretary 
Tumulty, sir.'' 

^^ He 's out, I believe," remarked the gentleman 
of the iron-gray hair. " Go through the doorway 
back there and ask inside." 

Through a wide-arched passageway I walked, 
and came upon a young man standing in a small 
corridor. He knew me as well as I knew him, 
which was not at all. Again I asked to be ad- 
mitted to Secretary Tumulty's office. 

" Second door to your left," directed the young 
man, with a thumb-jerk. " I think he 's out. 
Wait in his office till he comes in, if you care to." 

Wherefore within a few seconds I found that I 
had sauntered without interruption from the as- 
phalt of outdoors into the veloured and carpeted 
and leather-bound elegancies, " rich, but not 

240 




'•Second floor to your left," directed the young man with a 
thumb jerk 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

gaudy/' of the office of the secretary to the Presi- 
dent. There I sat, alone and unguarded, beside 
the door which leads into the President's office, 
which leads into a corridor, which leads into the 
innermost quarters of the White House. Alone 
and lonely. Now, on my visit to the War De- 
partment yesterday I at least wasn't lonely as 
I sat beside the vacant desk of a major and 
waited for him to come back from luncheon. I 
had found three other strange majors seated at 
three of the four desks in that little office, each 
with a girl stenographer by his side. And after 
one of the majors had looked up impersonally 
and had told me to pull up a chair and kill time 
as best I could until the missing major returned, 
all three majors had resumed their w^ork of dic- 
tating letters in conversational tones to the girl 
stenographers. How could one be lonely with 
three unknown gentlemen unfolding the War 
Department's correspondence aloud at one's el- 
bow in a room the size of a hotel bedroom? 

But to-day as I sat in Mr. Tumulty's tem- 
porarily deserted office the only entertainment I 
could think of was to sit there and debate with 
myself how many lashes of the knout I should 
give to young Dave Lawrence and the rest of the 

241 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Wasliington writer lads who had given me the 
scare of my life with their articles and pictures 
illustrating the terrors awaiting a stranger like 
myself who would dare to brave the suj^positi- 
tious barbed-wire entanglements in front of 
Washington govermental entrances. One hun- 
dred lashes, Ivan ; twenty-five for the little scare 
of yesterday in front of the jolly old State, War, 
and Navy building, and thrice that many for the 
greater scare at the White House to-day. Likely 
as not, so I now naturally decided, foreign writ- 
ers had been misleading all of us about similar 
conditions abroad. Likely as not, if a total 
stranger, visiting Berlin in war-time, wanted to 
get into the office immediately next to the one 
containing the kaiser's work-bench, all the 
stranger would have to do would be to walk along 
Main street, Berlin, until the kaiser's street num- 
ber was reached and then stroll inside without 
knocking, as in Washington, and wander round 
the works until one happened upon the butler. 
Ah, Looie, you 're growing thin. Is the boss 
home, Looie? He's out? Well, 1^11 just me- 
ander on toward the private offices, Looie, and 
stick round there till the kaiser or somebody 

242 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

shows up. By the way, I 'm an American, Looie. 
You forgot to ask me, you naughty, naughty but- 
ler, just as the doorman at the White House for- 
got to ask me whether or not I was a German 
the last time I strolled into our own national ex- 
ecutive offices at Washington. Now beat it, 
Looie. I want to sit here alone in the anteroom 
of the kaiser's quarters, because if he should 
chance along I want to see him alone and quick 
and first! Yes, that 's just what would happen 
in Berlin. If here, why not there? 

In my loneliness to-day I was tempted to turn 
the knob an arm's-length away and kill time by 
puttering round the President's desk in the office 
adjoining. Or perhaps I could stroll on into the 
corridor leading to the White House living- 
rooms until I came upon some good snappy book 
or magazine that would help me kill time till 
some one showed up. Before I left I did go into 
the adjoining office, properly escorted, and sat at 
the desk and gazed upon vacuity. And if the 
flowers and highly varnished solemnities of the 
secretary's office suggested the death-chamber of 
a Past Grand Exalted Ruler of the Elks, then 
the deserted room next to it surely made one feel 

243 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

that the late lamented Elk or Eagle recently had 
been removed to the dear old clubhouse for the 
final obsequies. 

Finally I heard a human voice, two of them. 
I could n't see the humans, and they could n't see 
me, but I could hear their type-writers begin to 
click and, as they chatted across their desks or 
answered the frequent ringing of a telephone bell, 
the sound of their voices came to me from the 
recesses of an arched passage out in the general 
direction of the street door by which I had en- 
tered. They seemed to have no fear that the 
President would wander at any moment from the 
seclusion of his living-rooms into his own office 
end of the White House; no thought that he 
would burst in among them excitedly, newspaper 
in hand, and boom dee-lightedly, " By George ! 
boys, here 's something bully ! " The two unseen 
clerks just went on clicking and telephoning ; and 
from the nature of the telephone talks it was 
evident that about every one in Washington and 
the world was trying to '' get into touch " with 
one or another of the President's official family, 
chiefly with the Secretary of the Treasury. On a 
conservative guess, nine out of every ten persons 
:who call up Secretary Tumulty's office are sure 

244 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

that the success of the war hangs largely upon 
the speed with which thej are " put in touch " 
with Secretary McAdoo. It is a notable fact 
that within ten days after Mr. McAdoo had been 
placed in charge of the country's railways his 
mail contained about ten thousand " personal " 
letters, half of them telling him how to run his 
job and the other half asking permission, for a 
consideration, to share his job with him. 

But if distant clicks and telephone bells were 
the only indications of activity round the White 
House, it always should be borne in mind that 
an appalling amount of work had been done 
there since morning, especially by the distin- 
guished head of the house himself. Hours earlier 
he had taken up the systemized tasks which are 
the penalty of holding down so colossal a job as 
the Presidency of the greatest country fighting, 
or finally getting ready to fight, in the world's 
mightiest war. For with the possible exception 
of the Rev. Billy Sunday, not a man in Washing- 
ton to-day, yesterday, every day, works harder to 
earn the little yellow pay-envelop than the Hon. 
Woodrow Wilson. 

Take yesterday as an example, or go back to 
the night before last. After a day as busy as all 

245 



THE WAR-WHIRL IX WASHINGTON 

the rest he had dined at seven, and then, in the 
seclusion of his study in the heart of the White 
House, he had labored until almost midnight 
over the final draft of a momentous message 
wherein were stated the only possible peace 
terms which America would consider. In that 
secluded study he keeps, especially since his vir- 
tual abandonment of the office which he and his 
predecessors used to use, his books, papers, and 
other printed and written matter which he must 
have within arm's-length. And as he worked on 
and on in his secluded exclusiveness two nights 
ago, not even the wisest newspaper correspond- 
ent in Washington, certainly no member of 
Congress, had any vague inkling that the next 
day he would appear suddenly at the Capitol and 
read his epoch-making message. 

Then toward midnight he had decided to call 
it a day and begin preparations to retire. At 
7:15 o'clock yesterday morning he arose and 
breakfasted. He spent a few moments over his 
message again, and next, before starting off on 
his regular morning trip to a golf-course for a 
bit of fresh air, he telephoned to Secretary 
Tumulty's house and broke the unexpected 
news that he would address a joint session in 

246 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

the House at midday. Would Mr. Tumulty 
kindly make arrangements at once for the 
joint session? Mr. Tumulty would, pulling 
on his helmet, rubber coat, and boots, and slid- 
ing doAvn the brass pole to get at the job quickly. 
Whereupon the President got into his hat and 
overcoat. In the driveway was his White House 
car, like any other town car of elegance except 
for the ornate Federal shield, tea-cup-sized, on 
the doors. And then, with two fast-flying mo- 
torcycle policemen setting the pace and a whole 
barrel of Secret Service men chugging along be- 
hind, the President was off for his bit of morning 
golf out near the district-line. 

Within two hours, as always, he was back in 
the White House, had taken his regular after- 
golf bath, and had put aside his golf-clothes for 
the well-cut, carefully pressed raiment, so far 
removed from the regulation baggy trousers 
which college professors seem to think they are 
sentenced to wear that the President Wilson of 
the knife-edge trousers probably never would 
recognize the Professor Wilson who used to wear 
mere pants. And now, not quite like the Hon. 
J. Ham Lewis or the lilies of the field, but a 
personage of unostentatious elegance, there is a 

247 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

summons for a secretary, stenograplier, for an}^ 
one needed from an office staff which, through 
long years of experience has attained an effi- 
ciency to be marveled at; and, still secluded in 
the heart of the White House living-quarters, he 
starts in to tackle his correspondence, an amaz- 
ing part of which requires his personal attention. 
Letter-writing of importance often takes up his 
time until the luncheon hour. Yesterday, how- 
ever, with a portentous message to Congress to 
be read at noon, he dictated somewhat earlier the 
last letter beginning with the formula, " May I 
not thank you for your recent letter and suggest 
that," etc. Again the two speedy motorcycle 
cops, the car, and the barrel of Secret Service 
men began to chug eastward, and within a few 
minutes the President was facing an expectant 
Congress. 

" What 's he going to talk about. Senator? " 

" Search me ! Never heard he was here till a 
minute ago.'' 

" Oh, I say, Hills, you newspaper lads know 
everything. What 's the President got on his 
chest?" 

" How 'd I know, Congressman? I just raced 
down here from our news bureau when I got the 

248 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

flash over the telephone that the Big Chief was 
headed this way. You Democrats on the ad- 
ministration side of the House ought to know 
something about it. Cm on, spill the news." 

"Nope. Sure as your name is Larry Hills, 
not a soul of us heard he was coming till Joe 
Tumulty began to get busy this morning. Gol- 
lies ! can you beat it ! " 

And that " Gollies ! " which the administration 
Representative ridded himself of yesterday noon 
as he and the newspaper man raced along a Capi- 
tol corridor toward the House side was not near 
so vehement as a lot of other exclamations which 
Senators and Representatives, from the Presi- 
dent's political camp as well as " the opposition " 
sides of the House and Senate, let loose almost 
any time that the matter of the President's ex- 
clusive secludedness enters into congressional 
conversations. The innovation of a President 
who rarely, almost never, takes individual mem- 
bers of Congress into his confidences causes pa- 
thetic bleatings on the part of his congressional 
friends and admirers and positive brain-storms 
on the other side of the middle aisle. As a far- 
thest Western representative, — who loomed 
large in the exciting days of the war declaration, 

249 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

put it to me months after we had entered the 
war : '^ He is the first President in my experi- 
ence who never lets his extra right hand, which 
is Congress, know what his private right or left 
hand is doing. He never talks things over, as 
his predecessors did, even big things, with a Mem- 
ber before he springs them on us ; never confers ; 
never paves the way. He alone of all the Presi- 
dents brings or sends us wholly unexpected mes- 
sages and measures, and then expects us to go 
ahead and act upon them without our having the 
slightest notion of how his mind is working on a 
given measure. Nobody under heaven but him- 
self has any notion, so far as we know, certainly 
nobody under the dome of the Capitol. He has 
no confidants, no intimates ; so there • s no one 
we can go to in order to get into working touch 
with him, not even a third party.'' 

There were tears in the voice of the Congress- 
man. Even louder are the private and person- 
ally conducted cries of anguish daily coming 
from congressional lungs, the owners of which 
had grown accustomed, sometimes throughout a 
generation of Washington sessions, to seeking 
the White House, or being sought by it, with 
much frequency ; to sit there intimately for half 

250 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

an hour, sometimes longer, in close-up conversa- 
tion with the particular Great White Father that 
graced the Executive Mansion during a given 
term. But nowadays Congressmen, high and 
low, have the feeling that if any particularly 
important piece of statesmanship is going to be 
cooked, a certain Personage will attend to the 
cooking unaided and then serve the whole dish 
himself. Hence pathetic bleats. 

Not that Senators or Representatives never get 
indoors at the White House to see the President 
in these days. If one of them is honored with 
an audience, the preliminai'y arrangements are 
made quickly, even to notifying a policeman at a 
northern gate now closed to the general public 
that Senator Sidewhiskers will arrive at that 
gate at a given hour. But as a rule such audi- 
ences come after the message or measure has 
been all cooked and served. Yesterday, for in- 
stance, after the President had read his notable 
message to Congress and had lunched between 
one and two o'clock with his family, callers be- 
gan to storm that north gate from a few minutes 
after tw^o o'clock in the afternoon until, with the 
exception of time taken out for dinner, eleven 
o'clock last night. Foreign Commissioners, Sen- 

251 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ators, Representatives, members of his official 
family, in and out they passed steadily in an ef- 
fort to unfold to the President views and ideas 
that had come to them after the President had 
exploded his message in the joint session. After, 
always after. And he saw all whom it was phy- 
sically possible to see, but they did n't sit and 
chin and smoke for an hour, half an hour, even 
for fifteen minutes, as in the good old days that 
were. The President was affability itself as he 
did most of the necessary talking, briefly, to the 
point. Then a hand-shake, one of those hand- 
shakes that passes you onward, with the extreme 
of cordiality, toward the top of the greased chute 
that leads to the Open Air Down And Out Club. 

" We ■ ve come down here; ' remarked David 
Belasco, proudly, to a Senator friend he met on 
the avenue, " representing the theatrical man- 
agers. We 're to go to the White House this 
afternoon for five minutes." 

" Five minutes ! '' cried the Senator. " What 
in thunder are you going to do with the other 
four minutes? " It is on record that Messrs. 
Belasco, Marc Klaw, George Cohan, and the rest 
of that delegation did n't know what to do with 
at least a part of the four minutes. Down to 

252 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

Washington they had come all primed up with 
speeches in which they were to show the Presi- 
dent that the great war revenue from the tax 
on theater-tickets and the splendid part the stage 
had played in raising funds for war-relief work 
entitled the managers at least to ask that they 
might be permitted to keep their show shops open 
on the ten coalless Garfield Mondays then con- 
templated. But those speeches never were de- 
livered. The President received the managers 
with his usual cordiality, shook hands, said a few 
appropriate sentences in appreciation of the 
stage profession's work along war-relief lines; 
then another hand-shake, the greased chute, and 
the managers came back to earth in the great out- 
doors, — it was round zero that day, too, in Wash- 
ington, — remembering suddenly as they came 
out of their daze that not once had they thought 
to step into the spot-light and unlimber the mod- 
ulated and sounding phrases carefully rehearsed 
during their all-night run from Manhattan to 
the capital. 

This morning there was not even a hand-shake 
indoors round the White House; just the clock- 
work regime of rising at seven, or seven -fifteen 
at the latest, breakfast, then whatever golf can 

253 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

be jammed inside of two hours, which also must 
include the run to the golf-course and back, the 
bath, and dressing which follows. And from 
that time until luncheon was served there was 
the attack upon the correspondence that reaches 
to world without end. Each day on his sanctum 
desk, and on the desk next to Mr. Tumulty's of- 
fice in case he should accidentally wander so far 
afield, the President will find a " reminder " of 
the different engagements and other work cut 
out for him that day. Take the list as prepared 
for to-day, type-written on a stiffish white card 
about the size of this page, with the leg- 
end, " THE PRESIDENT'S ENGAGEMENTS," 
printed, not engraved or embossed, but in simple 
type printed in dark-blue ink at the top of the 
card thus: 

THE PRESIDENT'S ENGAGEMENTS 

Wednesday 

12.00 noon THE WHITE HOUSE : 

The Governor General of Canada 
LUNCHEON: 

The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire 
3.00 p. m. THE WHITE HOUSE : 
Senator Lewis 
254 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

3.30 p. m. THE WHITE HOUSE : 
Mr. Hoover 

4.00 p. m. THE WHITE HOUSE : 

The Attorney General, The Secretary 
of the- Navy and Senator Swanson 

One should not get the notion from the day's 
engagements as listed above that the Governor- 
General of Canada and his duchess, after enter- 
ing the White House at noon, sat round and 
chatted with the President until luncheon was 
served at one o'clock. Not in this administra- 
tion of the party of Andy Jackson and JefiPerson- 
ian simplicity ! It is a social law nowadays that 
if one is invited to the White House for luncheon 
the honored big wig is first received in audience 
and then goes away from there for a brief while ; 
turns round and walks right out and comes 
right back again half an hour or so later for the 
luncheon part of the ceremonial. 

Also, in running over the list of the President's 
engagements to-day, it should not be forgotten 
that the Senator who did get fully half an hour of 
audience, from three to three-thirty o'clock, had 
all that time in the White House as his very own 
because Senator Lewis is the administration's 
representative in the Senate. Nor should an- 

255 



THE WAR-WHIKL IN WASHINGTON 

other engagement, scribbled hastily across the 
bottom of one of the President's engagement 
cards which lies before me as I write, be over- 
looked. " 5.00 p. M. THE WHITE HOUSE : De- 
legation of Western Congressmen." They also 
had a few minutes in the presence, but their en- 
gagement evidently was a last-minute one, which 
never had arisen to the dignity of being carefully 
typed in advance with the other items listed. 

All day every day the President manages to 
sandwich in between the steady run of appoint- 
ments more and more dictation of correspond- 
ence. Steadily throughout the day also the sec- 
retary to the President, who in the earlier Wil- 
son days used to dart in and out of the circular 
private ofiSce adjoining the secretarial desk to 
confer with the President verbally, now is con- 
stantly dictating numberless notes and sugges- 
tions and shooting them into the White House 
recesses at intervals in the hope that the Presi- 
dent will find in the brief notes some idea of in- 
terest, perhaps of real use. *^ Dear Governor," 
so the Tumulty notes begin early in the forenoon 
and continue until late. And the marginal nota- 
tions, in the President's handwriting, which deco- 
rate the notes when they come back to the 

256 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

secretary's office again show that the President 
finds time somehow to read and comment upon 
all the suggestions that come to him from Mr. 
Tumulty and his assistants. Here is an office 
staff which has reason to feel sure, unlike the 
bleating Congressmen, that it knows "how his 
mind is working on a given measure/' These 
notes from Mr. Tumulty are now the President's 
main bridge, his only bridge, that spans the vast 
expanse which in late days separates him from 
the public thought on a given measure. Now the 
secretarial office is the sieve, the chief separator, 
through which are sifted the thoughts or the per- 
sonalities which should or should not be pre- 
sented to the President. Newspaper clippings, 
editorials, sometimes sheaves of editorials on a 
given subject, are often included in the notes 
which the secretary sends farther indoors to his 
secluded chief. For even now in his unpre- 
cedented seclusion the chief presents the paradox 
of a President who, perhaps more than any of 
his predecessors, believes a leader should follow 
the thought of the crowd, and this regardless of 
the fact that a big part of that crowd still holds 
to the old-fashioned theory that the only reason 
one person out of the hundred million receives at 

257 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the polls their permission to enter the White 
House is that their choice is intellectually head 
and shoulders over the half-baked, scatter- 
brained "voice of the people^'; therefore is ex- 
pected to lead from the front rank, not the rear. 
Inasmuch as popular music is bad music, popu- 
lar painting bad painting, popular — 

But to return to the " delegation of Western 
Congressmen." When they had been hand- 
shaken out of the presence this evening the 
President again called it a day and began to pre- 
pare for dinner. After dining he decided, as 
frequently happens, to " take a night off." At 
least once, sometimes twice, a week he goes to 
the theater, preferably to a vaudeville or a 
" musical comedy " performance ; or he may de- 
vote the evening to reading until bedtime. And 
again and again one notes on his list of daily 
engagements advance notices to be ready at a 
given minute to touch a button in the White 
House and thereby illuminate the Main Building 
at the opening of the National Crazy Quilt Ex- 
position in far off What Cheer, Iowa, or light 
up the conference-hall where the Amalgamated 
Pretzel Varnishers' Union or the Industrial As- 
sociation of Carriage Wheel and Zebra Stripers' 

258 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

Unions of America are in annual convention at 
Blueduck, Illinois. He plays golf or goes to 
ball-games not so much as an enthusiastic fan, 
but as a part of a calculated, systematized pro- 
gram to get fresh air into his lungs and cobwebs 
from his brain; but he goes to the theater be- 
cause he likes the stage and all things pertaining 
to it. Even in these crowded days Raymond 
Hitchcock, DeWolf Hopper, Frank Tinney, any 
noted Thespian, can get within hand-shaking dis- 
tance (they Ve done so) and a two minute chat 
with far greater ease than the average member of 
Congress can. 

But the promiscuous hand-shaking in the 
White House now is a memory. The New 
Year's receptions, stupid relics of a capital and 
nation younger and smaller, and therefore more 
pliable, have been dispensed with, chiefly because 
they were boresome functions that kept the 
President standing for three hours of countless 
hand-shakes when his hand and mind might bet- 
ter be given to the stupendous tasks which con- 
front a chief executive in a world war. He 
" does n't want solemnity these days, but he does 
want efficiency," as it was put to me to-day at the 
White House. Only on the "cabinet days," 

259 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

those Tuesday and Friday afternoons each week 
which are now about the only times he sees what 
officially is still his office, is there any of the off- 
hand greetings. On those two afternoons the 
President comes from his study far inside the 
White House about two-fifteen o'clock. Then, 
and only then, for fifteen minutes there is a 
semblance of the old-time ease of access to his 
desk. Almost any one with or without a reason 
for his greeting — usually with no better reason 
than a chance "to shake hands with the Presi- 
dent " — may be escorted from Secretary Tu- 
multy's office to the President in the adjoining 
room — any one, that is, who is worthy and is 
known to his secretary or official family. But 
promptly at 2 :30 o'clock the little party comes 
to an end ; the last of the hand-shakers is with- 
drawn to outer darkness, and the President and 
his cabinet get down to business, and stick to it 
until about 5 :45 o'clock that evening. 

Saturdays are his free days, his " day out." 
He plays golf on Saturday mornings, often mo- 
tors on Saturday afternoons, and rests on Sat- 
urday night. His Sundays are devoted to at- 
tending religious services and then to a vast 
amount of reading, the reading being often a 

260 



THE WAE AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

matter of work in a way, inasmuch as a great 
deal of the Sunday readiug these days is devoted 
to poring over despatches, cable messages, and 
other papers of an official or semi-official nature. 
Thus it goes until late at night. By midnight, 
or shortly before, the White House is a ghost of 
a mansion, dark and silent, save for the measured 
tread of soldier guards who in war-time take the 
place of the policemen guards at nightfall, and 
Avith loaded rifles on shoulders slowly pace back 
and forth until the dawn of a new day. 

To-day was not one of the cabinet days; if it 
had been, I might have seen the President's of- 
fice in something of its old mood of human ac- 
tivity. I did not want to wander into that cir- 
cular office and so on into the White House 
without first waiting until somebody or other 
came along who would give me permission. Had 
I done so, who knows but in the corridors I 
might have bumped into one of the Major Ray- 
mond Pullman's fifty-eight varieties of White 
House cops, some of whom stroll indoors all har- 
nessed up in swagger and statesmanlike morning- 
coats and creased trousers, camouflaged sartori- 
ally and quite as free from that air of having 
been suddenly all dressed up as one of those 

261 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

vaudeville acrobats who " open the bill '' by com- 
ing upon the stage in evening clothes, his hair 
nicely oiled, before he pulls off everything and 
stands revealed in pink tights and spangles. 
One never, never would mistake any of the ma- 
jor's ornate indoor cops for cops; one might 
fancy, on the spur of the moment, that one had 
stumbled upon an Italian barber from the South 
Side of Chicago all garbed up on his bridal day, 
but otherwise Major Pullman's gorgeous guard- 
ians would have an intruder completely fooled. 

Fortunately, I didn't have to spend all my 
afternoon in solitude. By bits strange folk 
wandered into Secretary Tumulty's office, per- 
haps a dozen in all, and stood waiting near the 
open fireplace or sat round the room expectantly. 
Then the secretary to the President waded 
through whatever business had been keeping him 
outdoors and entered. For many minutes there- 
after it was a joy to sit on the side lines and 
watch the deftness, the easy certainty, with 
which young Mr. Tumulty handled the sieve and 
did the sifting. A clear-brained, alert, and very 
efficient little diplomatic embassy is the Hon. 
Joseph Patrick Tumulty all by himself. 

And then came a greatest moment, never to be 
262 



THE WAR AND THE WHITE HOUSE 

forgotten, which showed conclusively that the 
inner corridor which led from the secretary's of- 
fice into the innermost private sanctum sanc- 
torum of the President also led from that far 
study out to the very room in which I was sit- 
ting. Steps were heard approaching from those 
inner recesses, footfalls of a dignity and a 
strength of tread befitting a President of these 
United States of America. Conversation in the 
secretary's office came to an abrupt halt. One 
almost heard the instant silence which fell upon 
an awestruck room as the steps came near and 
nearer. And then the door leading back to the 
President's quarters opened portentously, and 
every one stood up as the door formed a frame 
for the graceful physique standing there in the 
well-made morning-coat, trousers pressed to 
knife-edge nicety. And there he stood, the Mag- 
nificent, the Honorable J. Ham Lems, fresh 
from his whole half-hour in the presence. Mauve 
were his spats, mauve of the evening sky was 
his cravat, pearl and mauve the kerchief that 
drooped with care-free care from an upper pocket 
of a coat as misty gray as a rare Whistler pic- 
ture, as free from seams or wrinkles as the silken 
cheek of a sleeping babe. And the one-time Pink 

263 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Aurora Borealis, the Pride of the Mississippi 
Valley, was the Pink Aurora Borealis no more: 
side-whiskers which were a nation's red badge 
of glory and pride back in the days when they 
glowed as ardently as a dawning day in farthest 
Ind, now had darkened to a rich khaki shade in 
keeping with the soldierly spirit of these martial 
days. 

" Gentlemen," he said graciously, bowled, and 
passed his homeward way perhaps forever from 
our sight. Tears of emotion sprang to my eyes, 
and the beautiful figure which a great poet had 
used to express his own emotions at the passing 
onward of the lovely Evangeline involuntarily 
came to my lips. 

Homeward serenely she walked with God's benedic- 
tion upon her. 

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of 
exquisite music. 



My day had not been in vain. 



s 



264 



CHAPTER X 

THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

STEVE, do Ton know something? " 
The wife was speaking. I 'm afraid I 
wasn't paying strict attention. A moment be- 
fore I had unlocked the door of our hotel-room 
closet in which I had had secreted since our ar- 
rival in Washington the little old black traveling- 
bag that railway-station redcaps had tried to 
grab from my hand once they had heard the 
glassy clink of the contents. I did not answer 
the wife promptly, my thoughts being centered 
ruefully upon the extreme emptiness of that little 
black bag, which now yawned vacantly open in 
my hand. Marvelous had been the way that the 
news of the arrival of the little bag in Washing- 
ton had spread among my old friends and new 
acquaintances throughout the capital. Day in 
and day out they had honored me with visits, 
their eyes glued upon that closet door. And the 
key to the door, which had worked stiffly when we 

265 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

first came to the city, now slid the bolt back with 
the noiseless ease of an automobile engine headed 
down-grade on its three-thousandth mile. 

" Steve, I 'm talking to you ! Do you know 
what I think?'' 

" No, Mr. Bones. What do you think? " 

"Well, I was just thinking this: after looking 
this town over for a spell I was just thinking 
how deplorable it is that the best that can be 
said of the dear old line which we all love to 
spout so solemnly, ' The voice of the people is 
the voice of God,' is that it is one of the worst 
blasphemies ever uttered. I don't think * the 
pee-pul ' ever in history were — " 

" Now wait a minute, old girl,'' I interrupted, 
snapping the bag and chucking it down on the 
closet floor. " Right in our own history, for in- 
stance, it was the people, was n't it, that first 
rose against the fool policies of England toward 
the colonies and wrote the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence? It was the people who carried the 
American Revolution to a successful conclusion, 
* the common pee-pul,' and then struck off a 
Constitution that 's never cracked under the 
strain, wasn't it? And again in 1812 it was 
the people who — " 

266 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

" Oh hush, Steve ! ' The people ' never did any 
of these things. They did resent being taxed 
without representation, even to the point of 
armed resistance, and they were quite right in 
doing so. More power to their elbows. But it 
was the trained thought of a little handful of 
leaders, their Ben Franklins and Washingtons 
and Jeffersons and the like, men who were what 
they were merely because they had lifted them- 
selves far above the mob, who wrote the Declar- 
ation and risked their necks by signing it and 
struck off the Constitution. If it had n't been 
for those same leaders, England would have 
thrashed the colonies soundly. The people 
did n't even fight the Revolution to a successful 
finish ; would n't have, at least, if it were left 
solely to the people. Whole droves of them 
would quit when they felt like it after a given 
campaign, and go back amiably to their own 
private pursuits, lots of 'em — what we 'd call 
deserting now. Then their great leaders, who 
never quit for a minute, would lambaste the quit- 
ters among them back into action again. And 
while Washington and a few more of his kind 
were making them keep everlastingly at it, an- 
other leader, who had educated himself miles 

267 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ahead of the people, went to Europe and induced 
the wisest men in France to send the help which 
went far toward crushing the English in the 
colonies. If the Revolution were left to the 
tavern keepers along the Philadelphia water- 
front or the farmers and woodsmen up and down 
the coast, the only result of the whole fuss would 
have been the annual convention here of the 
Daughters of the Revolution. 

" And as for the War of 181 2, it was ' the pee- 
pul ' right in this City of Washington who scat- 
tered like silly sheep when a force of British 
only about one fifth the size of the American 
Army opposed to it wandered into sight. Every- 
body, from the President down, turned tail and 
let the English walk into Washington and make 
a bonfire of the White House. They did n't have 
a real leader. Suppose one lone leader like Phil 
Sheridan had clattered into town when they were 
turning tail, something would have happened, 
would n't it? And who should receive credit for 
the repulse of the British that would have fol- 
lowed, the five or six American soldiers who 
could not face a lone Britisher unless directed 
by some one above the mental and moral level 
of the dear people, or the leader who single- 

268 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

handed had snatched victory out of stupid bun- 
gling? As the same Phil Sheridan and his kind 
have done and will do again so long as the world 
lasts. The people played party politics in that 
same War of 1812 as they never did before, and 
botched it from beginning to end thereby, and 
despite the brilliant work of a few sailor leaders 
we probably would have lost in the end if Eng- 
land had n't been so terribly exhausted while try- 
ing to down a lone individual who happened to 
be one of the great geniuses of history. ^The 
pee-pul ' make me very weary." 

" O, Mom, how ca7i you ! It was the people, 
was n't it, who, once we 'd gone into this present 
war, immediately raised a big army in record 
time?" 

" No ; in one sentence you 're wrong twice. A 
very few leaders, such as they are, passed the 
conscription law which made any sort of army 
possible. And it is n't a big army. It 's a puny 
army compared with the other armies in the pres- 
ent war. What there is of it is doing its work 
beautifully, and in time, I hope, it wdll be as 
good as the French, British, and other armies. 
But how can you say we have a ^ big ' army when, 
as representative of the greatest nation in the 

269 



THE WAE-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

whole war, it is of less importance in a military 
sense to-daj than the army of little Belgium or 
of tiny Serbia or even of Portugal? Think of 
it, less important than the little Portuguese 
Army ! And the people, as usual, go along flap- 
ping their wings, and screaming abut ' U-S, Us,^ 
and they don't even realize that Portugal is in 
the war at all. 

" What did ' the pee-pul ' have to do with rais- 
ing the present army, small as it is? Nothing. 
I 'd like to see the conscription law referred to 
a vote of ^ the pee-pul,' that 's all. What is con- 
scription, anyway, but a legal method of forcing 
the dear ' pee-pul - to do something that they 
would n't do properly unless compelled to? And 
the people of this particular country have over- 
fed themselves for so many years on the notion 
that business, big business, is everything that 
they are still pointing with pride to the big busi- 
ness being done in this town as if business were 
winning the war. Soldiers and sailors and big 
guns are going to win the war, not big business. 
If—" 

" But listen ! We 've just started. Mom. 
Wait at least until — " 

"'Wait I wait! wait!' Wait nothing. The 
270 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

instant that Germany jumped into war little Bel- 
gium, or a King who is a real leader, had an 
army against the Germans which was efficient 
enough to stop the greatest army in the world 
at least long enough to enable the French Army 
to race to the firing-line in taxicabs and anything 
else on wheels that could be commandeered. 
And here, almost four years later, almost a year 
after we entered the war ourselves, we 're still at 
the point where even now it is somewhat of a 
shock to us to read accounts in the newspapers 
which show that our men actually are being 
killed and injured on the battle-lines in France. 
Months after the first draft was called out, or 
theoretically called out, there were still about 
two hundred thousand of that first draft, all sup- 
posed to be at least in uniform, toasting their 
shins round their home fireplaces. Think of it! 
Declaring war in April, and in the following 
January two hundred thousand of the first men 
* called ' still waiting round their homes without 
even definite news as to when their preliminary 
training is to be begun. And the dear ' pee-pul ' 
have been spending so much time asking, ^ When 
will the war be over? ' that they don't even know 
that the two hundred thousand are still warming 

271 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

chairs in their home towns. That 's about all 
* the pee-pul ' have done since the war started — 
stand round and ask, ^ When will the war end? ' 
A fine way, that, to go up against a mixed-ale 
brawler, looking back over one's shoulder all the 
time in the hope that something '11 come along 
that will stop the scrap. Shucks ! ^ The pee- 
pul ' are a lot of fussfusses.'' 

" Outside of that, though, we 're all right, 
aren't we, old Mother Grumble?" 

" We are not, and we never shall be all right 
unless real leaders w^ho are not pacifists at heart 
jump above the ^ pee-pul ' and make us stop our 
monkejshines — that or a pummeling of ' the 
pee-pul ' by the Germans themselves which will 
make this crowd over here, even the ^ leaders,' so 
mad they '11 quit asking when the war is going to 
end and jump in full speed and end it. But there 
is n't one red-blooded man in high place to-day 
who in his heart believes even in universal mili- 
tary training — not a single civilian in high 
executive place, I mean; not one. The whole 
Mutual Admiration Society is made up of dear 
souls who inwardly, no matter what they say 
in print, believe even now that * diplomatic ' ef- 
forts to demoralize the Teutonic allies are more 

272 




The extreme emptiness of that litth' bhiek baj 



'2^ 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

important than pumping lead and steel into the 
beasts. 

" And just wait until ' the pee-pul ' begin to feel 
the real pinch of war a bit ! Wait till pa and ma 
learn that gasoline is needed so much abroad that 
they '11 have to experieuce the horror of sitting 
round the house on a pleasant Sunday afternoon 
instead of taking their customary spin of sixty 
miles over Long Island or Illinois roads ! While 
the boys abroad are trying magnificently to get 
over the top, ' the pee-pul ' back home, once the 
pinch comes, will only hamper the real sufferers 
with their whines about ; ' When is it going to 
end? When can we ride in our flivver? ' Bah! 
I wish we had one real forceful leader back here 
at home w^ho never heard about ' over there ' or 
' over the top,- but would stand right up on his 
hind legs and scream, ' Over the Rhine ! ' loud 
enough to make the whole shebang of us jump to 
his banner and do it. Heaven knows the episto- 
lary and oratorical efforts to make Austria fall 
out with Germany and all the rest of these intel- 
lectual efforts to win the war have their good 
points; everything helps, and I hope the letter- 
writers accomplish what they 're after. But the 
intellectual fighting is secondary, or twenty-sec- 

273 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

ondary, to the need right now of real leaders who 
can holler ' Over the Rhine ' in a way that will 
make the people see red. As somebody or other 
once said, ^ The great trouble with Ireland is the 
Irish/ and the chief trouble with the people in 
this democratic republic is the Democrats and 
the Republicans and the people. Heavens! I 
wish Napoleon had been born on the East Side of 
New York a generation ago, and early had gone 
into Bowery politics! He would have jumped 
right out of the thick of the people long ago and 
landed here in Washington, and we 'd go over the 
Rhine. But in the whole crowd running things 
here he has n't a third-rate representative.'' 

The chief trouble with any argument the 
Missus advances is that, being a woman, she does 
not use her reasoning powers as we business men 
do, but lets her emotion sway her ideas, which a 
man never does. The first thing I knew she was 
criticizing the Secretary of War himself because 
he was n't Napoleon ! And the wife never had 
seen the secretary, so far as I kuew; certainly 
never had talked things over with him, as I had. 
While the wife was opening up on the common 
l)eople I was thinking how differently she would 
have spoken had she been with me only the day 

274 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

before while I was talking the w^ar situation over 
wdth Secretary Baker himself. 

"Mr. Secretary/' I had said, "what sort of 
provision in the way of anti-aircraft guns has 
been made for New York City, if any? " 

"I don't care to discuss that,'' the secretary 
had answered. Then Secretary Baker had begun 
to talk with some one else, and before I could 
think of any other question to ask him somebody 
threw me out. 

That 's the only way to get a proper appreci- 
ation of a man — have a good heart-to-heart talk 
with him. Wherefore, just to prove to the wife 
that the Secretary of War was a splendid chap 
and a born leader of men, I took the trouble to 
interrupt her long enough to relate in detail 
some of the incidents that attended the initiation 
of Mr. Baker into his momentous job of Secre- 
tary of War. The incidents, I know, endeared 
him to me tremendously. 

It was a day in March, 1910, 1 remember, when 
Mr. Baker first entered upon his new duties in 
the State, War and Navy building at Washing- 
ton. Also it was the day, so I now reminded the 
wdfe, that the news burst upon Washington and 
the country that Villa and his gang had crossed 

275 



THE WAR- WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

the Mexican border, and at Columbus, New 
Mexico, had killed nineteen American citizens, 
including soldiers of the Thirteenth Cavalry, and 
had wounded at least a score of other Americans. 
And the fight had waged until more than fifty 
Mexicans had been killed in the Columbus neigh- 
borhood and seventy-five others shot dead on 
Mexican soil. 

Only two days before all these happenings on 
the border a famous New York newspaper had 
printed the spreading head-line, 

N. D. BAKER, PACIFIST, TO BE WAR 
SECRETARY 

And thus it was that the country was acquainted 
with the fact that the President at last had found 
a successor to the able Lindley M. Garrison. It 
may be remembered incidentally that Mr. Gar- 
rison while Secretary of War never had had his 
name put up for membership in the Mutual Ad- 
miration Society mentioned by the wife in her 
tirade, and one thing had led to another until 
finally Mr. Garrison had quit. 

Under the head-line above the counti^y was 
told who he was and how the genial young man 
had got his job : 

276 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

Newton D. Baker, ex-Mayor of Cleveland, has been 
selected by President Wilson for the office of Secre- 
tary of War. Mr. Baker is a member of a number of 
peace societies. 

The President and Mr. Baker are warm personal 
friends. The President tendered the Secretaryship of 
War to Mr. Baker in accordance with his decision 
to choose a lawyer from the Middle West [ !] for the 
post. 

Mr. Baker is a Democrat and was a conspicuous 
figure in the Baltimore convention that nominated 
Mr. Wilson for the Presidency. He was the original 
Wilson man in his State, voting the Cuyahoga dele- 
gation to the Baltimore convention for Wilson instead 
of Harmon. 

Mr. Baker's views on national defense have ex- 
cited great interest here in Washington. He has 
been classified as a pacifist. As a member of peace 
societies he has taken an active part against national 
defense measures. He is a member of the Cleveland 
Peace Society and of several other kindred organiza- 
tions, but says he sees no incongruity in remaining a 
member and being Secretary of War. 

Mr. Baker first attracted attention through his 
eloquence as an after-dinner talker. 

I remember how pleased we had all been when 
reading this glowing tribute to the new Secretary 
of War, and how it had thrilled me personally 
upon learning that at last we were to have a Sec- 

277 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

retary of War who was a good after-dinner 
speaker. And one could see in every line of the 
tribute that here was a great, red-blooded, fight- 
ing leader of peace-society movements " against 
national defense measures,'' just the sort of man 
to select to head our War Department at the mo- 
ment that our country was trying to balance 
itself on the brink of the greatest war of the 
world. It so happened that I was in Washing- 
ton on that March day when the new Secretary of 
War came to the capital to take personal charge 
of whipping our " national defense measures " 
into shape, and I remember now how I had hoped, 
even prayed fervently, that day that some way 
could be found to keep from our new young sec- 
retary the distressing news that our soldiers had 
just had a vulgar fight with a lot of horrid Mexi- 
cans, some of whom had actually so far forgotten 
themselves as to shoot our people dead. 

Some one, I was glad to see, did delay the 
sending of the shocking news at least long enough 
to permit the new Secretary of War to make a 
care- free, pleasant little call of formality at the 
White House during the early hours of his first 
day in office. As he came forth from that short 
visit, gently smiling, he was asked what he was 

278 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

going to do with his new job, now that he had it. 

"Well, being a greenhorn," the Secretary of 
War answered in his delightfully diffident man- 
ner, " I can't say that I have any policy of my 
own." 

Whereupon he started westward out of the 
White House grounds, and in a few minutes was 
seated for the first time at his new desk in the 
War Department. And there, lying among the 
beautiful flowers that decorated his desk, was a 
communication which some thoughtless person 
had cruelly placed where the eye of the Secretary 
of War could not help but see it. He picked it 
up and read the news that seven United States 
troopers of the Thirteenth and twelve civilians, 
one of them a woman, were lying dead, killed by 
foreigners on American soil, the intimation being 
gathered from the communication that details of 
further casualties were to follow. Bad as the 
news was to the rest of us, it must have been 
trebly distressing to a Secretary of War chiefly 
noted as an ardent worker " against national de- 
fense measures." 

Scarcely had the secretary read the communi- 
cation when into his office spilled a group of ex- 
cited newspaper correspondents representing the 

279 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

news associations and the great dailies of the 
country at Washington. If any of them had 
grown blase in his w^ork, that reporter showed no 
sign of boredom on the March day when he and 
his colleagues approached the new officer of the 
Cabinet. Here w^as " news/' a new Secretary of 
War not only taking up the direction of our mili- 
tary affairs at a time when a world war was try- 
ing to shatter civilization, but also stepping into 
office at a moment when the bodies of our own 
dead, lying prone on American soil, were still 
w^arm to the touch. ^^ Now we shall get an in- 
terview worth while ! '' that was the attitude 
with which the Washington correspondents 
crowded into the office of the suave, smiling Sec- 
retary of War to greet him. ^^ Noiv for a good 
old, red-hot, sizzling — '' 

"Ah," remarked the secretary, after the first 
formal bows and hand-shakes, the exclamation 
having escaped the secretary's lips as he noted 
that one of the reporters happened to be gazing 
in the general direction of a bunch of flowers 
prettily arranged just in front of Mr. Baker's 
revolving-chair — "ah, I see that you love flow- 
ers, too. These were sent to me by an admirer; 
I should say a friend." 

280 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

Some one tried impatiently to get some sort of 
start on the all-absorbing subject of the bloody 
raid that had just been made on American soil 
by the Mexicans, of the American girl hideously 
butchered, the soldiers and civilians lying dead 
and dying, and all the murder and rape and black 
ruin. But the secretary had not finished his dis- 
course on the beauties of the flowers, and it would 
not do, of course, to interrupt him. 

It was a natural thing for admirers of a new 
official to decorate his desk with flowers on his 
first day in office. It was quite as natural for a 
gentleman with so laudable a trait as a liking for 
pansies (even the bull-necked von Hindenburg 
finds his chief home joy in his garden) to discuss 
his hobby. But the reporters, true to their call- 
ing, wanted war talk, bloody war. 

Wherefore correspondents came forth from 
that interview chiefly concerned about the fact 
that the new secretary had talked only of his 
interest in pansies that bloomed back in the old 
home town of Cleveland. 

In their misery they staggered into the nearest 
drug-store to calm themselves with ice-cream 
sodas. 

Sadly they drank their syrupy tipple ; the new 
secretary, they decided promptly, would not " do.^' 

281 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

One brilliant correspondent, however, took the 
new secretary's part. No mere man, cried the 
champion of the War Department's new boss, 
conhl be expected instantly to formulate and de- 
scribe in detail a complete plan for handling so 
sudden and so serious an international comi)li- 
cation. Mr. Baker, concluded the secretary's 
journalistic friend, was the greatest war secre- 
tary that ever had led a peace movement. 

Now this tribute was voiced by a brilliant 
newspaper man, one noted for his keen, analyt- 
ical mind and his fund of rare judgment, in 
which I have always placed special confidence. 
What were the emotional tirades of the wife 
compared with this thoughtful analysis by the 
clever< newspaper correspondent I have now in 
mind? And this newspaper man of brains, a 
trained observer of men and affairs, had given his 
unqualified approval of young Mr. Baker as the 
right man in the right place, once he had got up 
steam. That was and is enough for me. Let 
the wife rave, say I, and that 's just what I 
did say to her, once I had told her all about the 
new Secretary of War's first day in oflSce and 
had quoted for her benefit the appreciation of the 
secretary as voiced by the brilliant correspond- 
ent while he was staggering out of the ice-cream- 

282 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

soda salon. And what bad his wife to say? She 
just threw back her head and laughed in what 
one might almost call a very vulgar manner, re- 
fusing even to reply when I asked the cause of 
her sudden merriment. 

" Steve," she said at last, wiping her eyes, 
"how old are you, really?" And immediately 
she seemed not to hear my answer, but suddenly 
had grown moody and thoughtful again. 

A queer race, women. What the deuce had my 
exact age to do, even remotely, with the serious 
matters under discussion? I shall not go so far 
as to say that woman in general is irrational, 
but there are times when I cannot help feeling 
that it is almost as close to impossible for a 
woman to think connectedly as it is for the mildly 
insane. For instance, I had come home to our 
hotel room somewhat late only a few nights be- 
fore the day the wife abused the common people, 
and in the darkness I awakened her to tell her en- 
thusiastically about a beautifully printed volume 
I had picked up during the day for only two 
dollars. I was about to snap on the electric 
light to show her my purchase when she woke 
up sufficiently to explain that during the evening 
the electric circuit supplying our floor had blown 

283 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

a fuse or something and was out of commission. 

"What is this wonderful book you bought?'' 
she asked. 

" It 's called ^ The Life and Addresses of the 
Hon. Josephus Daniels,' '' I told her. 

" Well, don't light the gas now to show it to 
me, dearie. You might blow it out," she said. 

Now here 's my point : The Missus was per- 
fectly aware of the fact when she made this re- 
mark that all my life I have been accustomed to 
the use of illuminating gas, that I thoroughly 
understood, quite as well as she did, that to blow 
out the light and thus permit the gas to flood the 
room would seriously injure, doubtless kill, us. 
Therefore by what " reasoning " power had her 
woman's " mind " swung all the way from 
thoughts concerning a purchase I had made that 
day to the sudden and wholly irrelevant idea, 
notion, rather, that we were in danger of gas 
poisoning? I ask the world fair, can you beat 
it? And yet in affairs of the home, in conducting 
the war, in the selection of national leaders, in 
anything and everything, it is always woman who 
figuratively jumps aboard the passenger-train of 
life and tries to tell mere man where he gets off! 

And a moment after she had asked me my exact 
284 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

age that clay she seemed to have forgotten that 
she had asked me; for in the next breath, with- 
out waiting for me to reply, she was again on the 
subject of the fighting abilities of the head of 
our War Department. 

" Now that you mention Secretary Baker's 
first day in office," thus mused the wife out loud, 
her brows knitted in thought, " I half remember 
the first statement the War Department made 
that day regarding the Villa raid into New 
Mexico. As I recall it, instead of coming out 
with a smashing, strong announcement that the 
murder of our people by the Mexicans must stop 
and would be stopped, the very first sentence was 
a sort of apologetic statement, assuring us that 
the administration was not going to show resent- 
ment against Villa and his cutthroats to any 
forceful extent. The whole statement, the very 
first ' official ' sentence pronounced by the new 
Secretary of War, has stuck more or less in my 
memory because the ideas it expressed were so 
thoroughly in character with the Administra- 
tion's permanent war policy of just ^making a 
showing.' " 

There was no use in standing there and try- 
ing to correct the wife's erroneous thinking by 

285 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

mere noise. I was in no position to give battle 
because, I must confess, the gist of that first 
statement of the secretary's had long ago escaped 
my memory. But the more I thought the thing 
over, the more I realized that whatever the sec- 
retary did say that day was the official thought 
of the whole administration and not the mere 
personal ideas of the Secretary of War, then the 
more sure I felt that the wdfe must be wholly 
mistaken in saying that the statement was not a 
forceful expression of the intense action about to 
be begun to stop the raids. 

I don't like to let the wife get away with these 
arguments of hers without at least letting her 
know that she has been in a battle. Wherefore 
when, later on that forenoon, I was strolling 
along Pennsylvania Avenue I slipped into a 
local newspaper office and asked a clerk to let 
me see a bound file of their paper for March, 
1916. And simply to prove to the wife that the 
Secretary of War, speaking for his Commander- 
in-Chief, had not made his initial bow to the 
people by giving forth a half-hearted and apolo- 
getic promise merely to " make a decent show- 
ing " in retaliating against the Villa butchers, I 

286 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

copied the opening paragraph of that statement 
and brought it home to the wife exactly as 
printed in the newspapers the day after Secretary 
of War Baker took office. Secretary Baker had 
begun, I found, as follows : 

There is no intention of entering Mexico in force. 
A sufficient body of mobile troops will be sent in to 
locate and dispose of the band or bands that attacked 
Columbus. So soon as the forces of the defacto Gov- 
ernment can take control of the situation any forces of 
the United States then remaining in Mexico will, of 
course, be withdrawn. 

Triumphantly, there in the Washington news- 
paper office, I underscored heavily the words, 
" locate and dispose of,'' with a double line be- 
neath the word dispose. And half an hour later, 
while we were lunching up-stairs in our hotel 
room, I grinned maliciously and handed the wife 
the copy of the secretary's first official words in 
office. 

" So that 's what you call typical of ' this whole 
administration's permanent war policy of just 
making a showing,' eh?" I cried with gusto. 
The wife's eyes ran over the lines, and in turn 

287 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

she underscored the first sentence twice and drew 
a line under every other word in the paragraph 
also. 

" Yes, that 's typical/' she said, handing me 
back the paper with a smile that lacked merri- 
ment. " ' There is no intention of entering Mex- 
ico in force.' I distinctly remember those open- 
ing words now, and I recall that I 've heard them 
in slightly different form every few days since 
then.'' 

" Well," I exclaimed in astonishment, " did n't 
the administration send an armed force into 
Mexico?" 

" Yes," the wife agreed listlessly. " It retali- 
ated against the Mexicans with comparatively 
the same ' force ' it finally decided to send against 
the Germans. It sent into Mexico a ' force ' 
just big enough to enable another group of 
American boys to give up their lives, but not 
big enough to locate anything, dispose of any- 
thing. In these days of the wireless the sjilendid 
little band of fighters who did go in could not, 
unfortunately, ' cut the cable,' as Dewey did at 
Manila, and so be free of Washington interfer- 
ence. And, you may remember, they just had 
about time to bury their dead when word came 

288 




And the extravagance of her language left me crumpled in my 

chair 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

from Washington to come home. And nothing 
came of anything." 

" But listen, old girl — look at the way we 
waded into them when one of their old savages 
refused to salute the Stars and Stripes after in- 
sulting the flag. In next to no time this admin- 
istration had war-ships and marines and sailors 
and — " 

" Yes/' interrupted the wife, still listlessly 
sipping her tea. " I 've been thinking of Vera 
Cruz, too. We went down there, I remember, 
and went into Mexico a sufficient number of city 
squares from the water-front to have another 
batch of our boys shot. And that 's all that ever 
happened. At the first sight of blood Washing- 
ton hurriedly called the whole thing off. As we 
had gone there to ^ make them salute the flag ' 
with only a pretense of a force, the only thing 
that came out of the entire fiasco was an impres- 
sive line of about twenty gun-caissons moving up 
through lower New York one morning with a flag 
covered cofSn on each caisson. Nothing else had 
happened; nobody had been forced to salute the 
flag. After the Columbus affair Villa laughed 
at us, and the raids were n't stopped, have n't 
been even yet. And after Vera Cruz old Huerta 

289 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

laughed at us and still refused to salute the flag. 
And Mexico told the lads sent in to ' locate and 
dispose of ' Villa to get out of Mexico, and 
Washington humbly obeyed. Whereupon our 
splendid little ^ army/ or what the Mexicans had 
spared of it, had to come home again in shame- 
faced fashion because it had been ordered to do 
so by a group of executive superiors who never in 
their lives have shown as much real gumption 
and fighting spirit as you '11 find in any class elec- 
tion in a young ladies' seminary." 

"Now wait, Mrs. Grumble. Do you think 
that 's a loyal way to — '' 

" Oh, dammit, shut up with this everlasting 
parrot talk of ^ loyalty ! loyalty ! loyalty ' ! " cried 
the wife, springing up from the table. The ex- 
travagance of her language left me crumpled in 
my chair, jaw sagging and too shocked to speak. 
" Great heavens ! " she stormed on, pacing the 
floor as she talked, '' as somebody or other said 
lately, * Whose war is this, anyway?' Is it the 
private property of estimable after-dinner speak- 
ers from the Middle West, or the personal prop- 
erty of learned pedagogues who preached against 
even decent preparedness when our own people 
were being shelled and drowned, and then kept 

290 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

on preaching sheer insanity until enough of the 
* disloyal ' had got together to shake some sem- 
blance of common sense into the whole crowd of 
mollycoddles — does this war belong solely to 
the people's servants or to the people? This is 
my war, your war, our war I 

'' * Loyalty ! ' That w^ord in every meaning but 
the right one has been hammered into the people 
day in and day out during the last few months as 
it never before was jammed down the country's 
throat in the whole history of the nation. Day 
and night on the floor of the Senate and every- 
where else round here the petty-politics spokes- 
men of the Mutual Admiration Society, the thou- 
sands of flatterers all over this city who have 
been suddenly thrust into a sort of prominence 
by appointment to jobs which in turn flatters the 
flatterers, correspondents of Democratic news- 
papers, special writers for magazines who have 
been coddled and made much of — all day every 
day the whole crowd bends to the task of con- 
vincing the people that it is ' loyalty ' to sub- 
scribe to anything and everything the Mutual 
Admiration Society sanctions, but ' sedition ' to 
say one w^ord that might ' embarrass ' the dear 
old Democratic party. As if the most important 

291 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

movement the world has ever undertaken and 
the rapid and successful execution of that move- 
ment were of secondary importance to the per- 
sonal advancement and fame of politicians small 
enough to put their own miserable little personal 
ambitions above a generous and unpartizan and 
united effort to bring the great movement to 
success! Bah! For three of the most humili- 
ating years that a soft-headed people ever experi- 
enced the whole Mutual Admiration Society 
tried, on the plea of * loyalty ! loyalty I ' to silence 
every decent protest against submitting to the 
vile insults of that big bully abroad. Day and 
night the self-appointed owners of this war stood 
round with a frown, shaking their collective 
fingers severely and crying : ' Be loyal, good 
people ! Stand by the President ! ' until almost 
the entire land had become convinced that the 
heavenly height of pure loyalty was to sit in the 
house and watch a drunken beast attack your 
mother and then applaud your father for not re- 
senting the beast's attack." 

I broke in for a minute, or tried to, and asked 
the wife to calm herself and forget it. 

^' I '11 not forget it," she exploded. " I 've had 
this ^ loyalty ' stuff crammed into me so much re- 

292 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

cently that I 'in going to get the whole thing out 
of my system. It makes me sick, sore, and tired 
to think that when at last we were dragged into 
this fight by the scruff of our necks the whole Mu- 
tual Admiration Society instantly swung all the 
way round, once they found themselves forced at 
least — and at last — into starting toward doing 
the things that, during the three years preceding 
they had tried to stop any one even from advo- 
cating under pain of being ^ disloyal/ 

*' And the minute they had been kicked into an 
upright position, where they at last were shoul- 
der to shoulder with the decent peoples of 
Europe, they began right away to head their 
whole tribe of press agents here in a wholly dif- 
ferent direction. Three cheers for everything! 
Hurray ! w^e 're going to strangle the kaiser to 
death — on paper. The press agents of cabinet 
ofl&cers came out with statements so extravagant 
and absurd that assistant secretaries that I could 
name hung their heads in shame when they heard 
the impossible claims made by their chiefs. * We 
shall have twenty thousand airplanes ready for 
active work in Europe by the summer of 1918,' 
that w^as one of the examples of bosh given out 
solely to hoodwink the public into believing that 

293 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

mollycoddles had suddenly become fire-eating 
warriors. * We shall build six million tons of 
shipping in the same time.' Bosh I I took the 
trouble here in the hotel the other day to look 
through one copy of the Government organ 
known as the ' Official Bulletin/ which, theoreti- 
cally, the Government has a right to print solely 
that the public might have some idea of what 
really is being done by the Administration in the 
conduct of the war. And I gathered from the 
' Official Bulletin ' that the compilers of the pub- 
lication also perforce must take part in Wash- 
ington's greatest indoor sport, the same just now 
being to spread broadcast verbatim reports of all 
the kind words Avhich those who wear the coro- 
nets are constantly saying about themselves. 
Anybody with common sense knows that we shall 
be lucky, at the present rate, if we have even ten 
airplanes by summer instead of the twenty thou- 
sand promised so grandiloquently. One man 
who never joined the Mutual Admiration Society, 
but does know all about our airplanes, for the 
reason he is one of the big bosses actually mak- 
ing them, put it this way to me right here in 
Washington only a few days ago : 

" I suppose the powers round here will accuse 
294 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

me of ' lending aid to the enemy ' when I say out 
loud we sha'n't have anything like a small frac- 
tion of twenty thousand airplanes ready ; but as 
Germany knows all about our aircraft shortcom- 
ings, I can't see how we give aid to Germany by 
letting our own people get an inkling of a condi- 
tion that is ancient history to the German peo- 
ple.' 

" And when it comes to six million tons of ship- 
ping by the summer of 1918, bah again! To 
make the ships we haven't even taken the first 
steps toward conserving the labor that is to build 
them. We play with wheatless days and meat- 
less days, and not a genius in all this capital ever 
stops to realize that a product more important 
than wheat or meat or anything else, the most 
important product in the whole conduct of the 
war — labor — is still altogether unregulated, 
not mobilized, still hopelessly in a state of 
scramble. And if any ' seditious ' person does 
step forward to suggest that we at least try to 
approach what Great Britain has done in 
mobilizing labor, instantly the small-town poli- 
ticians who call themselves ' leaders of the peo- 
ple ' begin to think first of the dear labor vote 
next election day and, secondly, of the war. 

295 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

Lord Nortlicliffe was one of these ' disloyal ' per- 
sons, too, ^ lending aid to the enemy,' a ^ paid 
agent of Germany,' and all that sort of thing in 
the days when England was passing through the 
' loyalty ' spasm which is now epidemic over here 
or epizoodic over here. And finally England 
awoke to the fact that Northcliffe's contribution 
of ^ aid to the enemy ' was to take the supremacy 
of the air away from Germany and kick a fat- 
headed bureaucracy generally into action. And 
the tirades in England against NorthclifPe had n't 
died down before England had suddenly begun to 
reward him by making him the supreme head of 
a force of ten thousand specialists working night 
and day for England and the Allies in the office 
buildings and on the plains of America." 

^^ Have you finished. Mom?" 

" No, I have n't started. But that 's all I 'm 
going to say to-day. I 'm going to put on my 
hat, and you 're going to put on yours, and we 're 
going to take a run down to Mount Vernon this 
afternoon. And to-night we 're going to pack 
up and w^e're going back home to New York, 
where I shall continue to be ' disloyal ' from the 
Mutual Admiration Society's point of view, even 
at the risk of costing the dear old Democracy, or 

296 



THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION CLUB 

Republicanism, as the case may be, a couple of 
votes. Come, let 's get out of tbis before some- 
body hears me and interns me with the other dan- 
gerous enemies of the Mutual Admiration So- 
ciety." 

I was glad the wife had decided upon that re- 
freshing motor-trip down among the withered 
Virginia fields of winter. The bracing winter 
air and, above all, the gentle peace and quie- 
tude in and round the lovely old colonial man- 
sion that once had been General Washington's 
w^as a tonic that would go far toward relieving 
her of whatever it was that was the matter with 
her. And so we strolled about the Mount Ver- 
non rooms, and talked with the dignified old 
gardener in the greenhouse on the estate, and 
entered upon a learned discussion with an aged 
darky on the grounds about the more or less evi- 
dent good points of his hound-ketchin' dawg. 

" Why let yourself get all flustered, old girl," 
I said as we strolled back toward the waiting 
car to return to Washington, '^ about what is or is 
not being done in the war? What good does it 
do? You and I can be as peaceful, at least in 
our own hearts, as the peace and quiet we've 
found here to-day on this spot, which is the heart 

297 



THE WAR-WHIRL IN WASHINGTON 

of all America. Is there any suggestion of war 
worry here at Mount Vernon? Can you, by any 
wildest stretch of imagination, fancy even one 
hint of all this world worry penetrating into the 
calmness of this old estate, even when — " 

Boom! The roar of a great gun came from the 
testing-grounds far down the river at Indian 
Head. The chattering sparrows on the leafless 
trees listened with heads cocked to one side. 
Bang! Bonk! Boom! Boom! Up the ice- 
locked Potomac came the roar of salvos of great 
guns, the echoes rolling back in softer thunders 
from the Maryland and Virginia hills. 

" No," said the wife, softly, as the roar of the 
big guns throbbed on and on. " There is n't any 
place in all this world where even the selfish can 
^ forget ' — not until we have finished it all for- 
ever. Come on. Let 's go home." 



TPIE END 



298 



9 66 



